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BOSTON
Medical Library
8 THE FENWAY
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I
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THE
PSYCHOANALYTIC
REVIEW .
A Journal Devoted to an
Understanding of Human Conduct
EDITED and published BT
WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D.
AND
SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, M.D.
VOLUME V
1918
WASHINGTON, D. C.
3617 lOTH Strbbt, N. W.
I9I8
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jM MEOi.
• LCO
nun or
IM New nu riUHTIIM OOMMMr
lAMCAntll. PA.
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME V
Original Articles
Pagt
Analysis of a Case of Manic-Depressive Psychosis Showing
Well-Marked Regressive Stages. L. Dooley i
Reaction to Personal Names. C. P. Oberndorf 47
The Interpretation of Certain Symbolisms. J. J. Putnam ... 121
Charles Darwin — ^The Aflfective Sources of his Inspiration and
Anxiety-Neurosis. E. J. Kempf 151
The Origin of the Incest- Awe. T. Burrow 243
Compulsion and Freedom. S. E. Jelliffe and L. Brink 255
A Case of Childhood Conflicts with Prominent Reference to the
Urinary System ; with Some General Considerations on Uri-
nary Symptoms in the Psychoneuroses and Psychoses. C.
M. Campbell 269
The Hound of Heaven. T. V. Moore 345
A Lace Creation Revealing an Incest Fantasy. A. B. Evarts 364
Nephew and Maternal Uncle : A Motive of Early Literature in
the Light of Freudian Psychology. A. K. Weinberg 381
Translation
A Study of the Mental Life of the Child. H. von Hug-
Hellmuth 53, 193, 291, 398
Critical Review
The Significance for Psychotherapy of Child's Developmental
Gradients and the Dynamic Differentiation of the Head
R^on. W. A. White 93
Abstracts
Jahrbuch f iir psychoanalytische und psychopathologische For-
schungen.
Vol. II, Part Two 104, 228
Contributions to Psychology of Love ; Concerning a Special
Type of Object Choice in Man. S. Freud.
iii
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IV CONTENTS OF VOLUME V
The Theories of Organ Inferiority and of Bi-Sexuality in
Their Relation to the Neuroses. G. Rosenstein.
Concerning Urethral-Erotism. J. Sadgeil
The Analysis of Egmont's Dream. P. A. Robitsek.
A Dream That Explains Itself. O. Rank.
Fantasy and Fable. H. Silberer.
The Psychoanalysis of Freud. E. Bleuler.
Report of the Second Private Psychoanalytical Conference
in Nuremberg on March 30 and 31, 1910. O. Rank.
Concerning Criticism of Psychoanalysis. C. G. Jung.
Imago.
Vol. II, No. 4 323
Some Similarities in the Mental Life of Primitive and Neu-
rotic People — ^IV. The Infantile Return to Totemism.
S. Freud.
Nakedness in Saga and Poetry — II. O. Rank.
Vol, II, No. 5 428
Early Religion. L. Andreas-Salom£.
The Art of Andreas del Sarto and the Influence of his
Wife. E. Jones.
The Origin of the Artistic Inspiration. O. Pfister.
The True Nature of the Child Psyche. Edited by H. v.
Hug-Hellmuth. I, The Childhood Memories of Baron
de la Motte Fouque. E. F. Lorenz. II, From the Life
of Guy de Maupassant. T. Reik. Ill, Claire Henrika
Weber: "Liddy," v. Hug-Hellmuth. IV, Mother
Love. S. Spielrein. V, Alfred Machard : " The Hun-
dred Urchins." W. Klette. VI, Louis Pergaud :" The
War of the Buttons Romance of My Twelfth Year."
W. Klette. VII, Dostojewski, "Njetotschka Neswa-
nowa," A Fragment of a Romance. J. Harnik. VIII,
Multatuli on the Desire for Knowledge. Contributed by
O. Rank.
Miscellaneous Abstract
The Psychological Study of Judicial Opinion. T. Schroeder 336
Varia
Fragments of Criminal Psychology. B. Glueck 338
Ceremonial Defloration. E. C. Parsons 339
Hypnotism and Psychoanalysis : A Comparison. C. F. Streeten 436
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME V V
Idealism and Psychoanalysis. C. F. Streeten 440
A Game of Cards — ^Hearts. M. Dodge 442
Book Reviews
Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races, by S. Brown,
n 341
The Mastery of Nervousness, based upon Self-Reeducation, by
R. S. Carroll 341
The Psychoanal)rtic Method, by O. Pfister 342
Experiments in Psychical Research at Leland Stanford Junior
University, by J. E. Coover 343
Totem and Taboo, by S. Freud 445
Personality and Conduct, by M. Parmalee 446
The Mental Survey, by R. Pinter 447
Psychological Tests, by G. J. Rueger 447
Mrs. Marden's Ordeal, by J. Hay, Jr 447
Morbid Fears and Compulsions, by H. W. F^nk 448
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO AN
UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN CONDUCT
Volume V January, 1918 Number i
ANALYSIS OF A CASE OF MANIC-DEPRESSIVE
PSYCHOSIS SHOWING WELI^MARKED
REGRESSIVE STAGES^
By Lucilb Dooley, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT IN PSYCHOTHERAPY AT ST. EUZABETH'S HOSPITAL, WASHINGTON, D. C
I
In undertaking to make a detailed report of the case here dis-
cussed, I am guided by the principle first laid down by Freud* and
Breuer in connection with the psychoneuroses, applied with con-
spicuous success by Jung* and Meyer* to the praecox group of dis-
orders, and by Abraham,*' Maeder,® MacCurdy^ and C. M. Campbell*
to the manic-depressive group. This principle is that the psychosis
is not a wild unordered outbreak of mental entities, due to physical
disorders the causality of which cannot possibly be demonstrated,
^ Read at a meeting of the Washington Psychoanalytic Society, December
8, 1917.
2 S. Freud : Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1893-1906,
Leipzig, 1906.
* C. G. Jung : The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, Leipzig, 1909.
* Adolf Meyer : The Dynamic Interpretation of Dementia Praecox, Amer-
ican Journal of Psychology, 1910.
** K. Abraham : Ansatze zur psychoanalytischen Erf orschung und Be-
handlung des Manisch-Depressiven Irresein und verwandte Zustande, Zen-
tralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, 1912.
* Maeder : Psychoanalyse bei einer Melancholischen Depression, Jahrbuch
fur Nervenkranken und Psychiatrie, III, 191 1.
^ J. T. MacCurdy : Productions in a Manic-like State illustrating Freudian
Mechanisms, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 8, 1914.
» C. M. Campbell : On the mechanism of some cases of manic-depressive
excitement. Medical Record, New York, 1914.
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2 LUCILE DOOLEY
but that it is a definite and not altogether incomprehensible reaction
to a set of circumstances governing the individual's life. It is an
actual constructive attempt on the part of the patient to meet and
adapt himself to conditions that he finds himself unable to meet in
a normal and successful way. Close and intelligent observation of
a manic patient, with only a fairly comprehensive inquiry into his
past life, may be sufficient to reveal the probability of such an ex-
planation, while a careful psychological analysis may establish it
beyond a doubt. The work of Abraham, MacCurdy and Campbell
has done invaluable service in establishing the analytical method
of studying the manic-depressive psychosis. I submit this hoping
that it will be useful, first, in confirming the views that they have
set forth, and second, in offering a more distinct and orderly mani-
festation of the regression-phenomena than has hitherto been pub-
lished in the literature of the manic type of psychosis.
Another point of great interest which I have made no attempt to
work out in the limits of the present contribution is the suggestion of
close relationship between the different types of functional psychosis.
The patient under discussion showed, especially at the onset of the
psychosis, symptoms associated with prsecox or schizophrenia, and,
further back than that, manifestations attributed to hysteria. As
the psychosis progressed, the manic symptoms came more and more
to the front, however, so that the final diagnosis agreed upon was
that of manic-depressive psychosis, determined by the patient's dis-
tractibility, the flight of activity, the absence of stereotypy, the
periodicity of the attacks, the manifestly extroverted type of per-
sonality, and — ^but this is now of very questionable diagnostic value
— ^the complete recovery. If only a brief account of the case, made
from casual observation, were given, the periodic recurrence of the
same regressive order of activity, set forth in the pages to follow,
might be construed as representing a stereotyped character, but the
fact is that the particular activities of the successive recurrences
were never the same. The general interests were somewhat the
same, but the reaction to these interests was always different, and
everything in the patient's environment played its part. The dis-
tinguishing marks of schizophrenia were absent, while, as MacCurdy
has shown, the archaic type of reaction, which was formerly at-
tributed to the prsecox group, may also occur in manic cases. I
have in mind two other cases of unquestioned manic type which
illustrate this fact and which I hope to report in a future com-
munication.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 3
In the present case it is almost conceivable that the patient might
have taken any one of three types of reaction — ^psychoneurotic,
schizophrenic or manic-depressive — ^that she hesitated for a time
in an indeterminate state, and that finally her type of personality,
more inclined to extroversion than introversion, energetic and mas-
terful, determined the reaction to be of the manic character. The
study of the case confirms, at any rate, the conclusion of Abraham
and MacCurdy, that the conflicts and imsuccessful adaptations lead-
ing to this psychosis are of the same character as those leading to
the hysterical attacks reported by Freud, and the praecox psychoses
of Jung, Ernest Jones,® Kempf,^^ Meyer, and others. The hy-
pothesis that the type of psychosis developed is the outcome of
factors of personality acting upon a biological situation of failure in
adaptation common to all the functional psychoses and the psycho-
neuroses becomes worthy of study, and may well indicate a recasting
of some of the current principles of differential diagnosis.
Lastly, it is hoped that a report made with such fullness of de-
tail, at the risk of tedium, as I have put into this one, will be of
value to those beginning the study of the psychoses by the psycho-
analytic method, simply because it offers a wealth of illustrative
material which can be related definitely to the development of an
individual psyche.
II
The case reported is that of a young woman, aged twenty-one,
admitted to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D. C, in October,
1916, suffering from a maniacal attack reported to be her first. The
patient showed flight, distractibility, great press of activity and some
willfulness, but in a few days grew quiet, became interested in her
surroundings and amenable to hospital discipline. Attacks of ex-
citement, with much activity, recurred periodically thereafter, which
I shall describe in the third division of this discussion.
There is a faulty heredity, her paternal grandfather, a brilliant
man, having died of paresis, one paternal uncle was alcoholic, a
maternal great aunt and unde were feeble-minded, and her father
is a clever but very erratic character, fond of wandering in his
youth, unconventional, devoted to literary pursuits and mechanical
• Ernest Jones : Notes on a case of Hypomania, Bulletin of the Ontario
Hospitals for the Insane, 1910.
i®E. J. Kempf: The Psychology of "The Yellow Jacket," Psycho-
analytic Review, IV, 1917.
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4 LUCILB DOOLEY
inventions. He is thought to have been very near a psychosis in his
early manhood. The mother is of strong moral character but self-
eflfacing. The father dominates the family. Neither parent fur-
nished a satisfactory ideal for the growing girl.
The patient was fairly healthy, but had a weak throat after
scarlatina, suffered much from constipation, treated by enemata, to
which she objected, and showed, because of her very unhygienic up-
bringing, a good deal of auto-eroticism. She sucked her thumb,
played with parts of her body, and developed the habit of masturba-
tion in her twelfth year.
The family life was irregular and unconventional, affording
little opportunity for the formation of stable habits. The absence
of childish companions other than her younger sister, much atten-
tion from adults, and stimulation by her father's allowing the chil-
dren to share in all their social life, fostered her natural precocity,
her sturdy egoism, and her inability to fit in with companions her
own age. She soon became sensitive over the irregularity of the
home r^ime and over her lack of hygienic habits — ^notably regular
bathing — ^and told her first remembered lies in order to conceal this
from schoolmates. The feeling of inferiority generated by these
differences from other children, first experienced when, at nine, she
entered school, was combated for a time by an intellectual and social
leadership, and by the notice she received from her teachers. She
developed an attitude of superior aloofness when she found herself
thrown much with younger children, as she was because of the late
age at which she entered school, yet was of a naturally sociable dis-
position, readily responsive to other personalities. The absence of
childish companionship sufficiently congenial and stimulating threw
her back upon the life of fantasy indulged in by most children, which
grew to undue proportions and persisted far into adolescence. She
was taken much to the theater and opera, which overstimulated her
imagination and created a taste for the spectacular and melodra-
matic. Play of a creative sort was neglected. The patient rebelled
against it, besides, because other children did not go to the theater,
and this was a further point of estrangement from them.
This was one of the things that led to a gradual growth of a
feeling of being always passive in the hands of her father. A strong
attachment to him strove with a perfectly natural but sternly re-
pressed rebellion against him, until, in late adolescence, the conflict,
pressing into the outskirts of consciousness, became effectual as one
of the factors in the final overthrow of her mental balance. Much
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 5
of her difficulty was known by her to be indirectly traceable to her
father's influence, although she repressed the conscious attitude of
censuring him. His character fascinated her, while his inconsid-
erate conduct gave cause for irritation and lessened her filial respect.
To his teaching and to the intellectual brilliance he lent the home
circle she owed her own intellectual eminence, but to his eccentricity
she owed her inability to fit easily into the environment about her.
Her one way of asserting her own will against his domination was
by imitating him as closely as possible, a way of " out-heroding
Herod" found often enough in cases where a father-complex be-
comes paramount. In the psychosis later a favorite phrase of hers
was "beating people at their own game."
The history of her sexual development is rather typical of the
neurotic personality. When she was four, a boy of fifteen exposed
himself to her. Her curiosity was aroused, but later suppressed so
strongly that she grew up an unusually " innocent " girl. Soon after
this, a little colored girl told her of the " devil." The idea became
associated with her guilt over sex-curiosity, and she nightly feared
to find the devil under her bed. Dreams of burglars and robbers
creeping upon the house characterized this period. Further curiosity
was aroused by the birth of a baby brother at five. She was quite
ignorant and probably formulated the alimentary canal theory.
Later she connected the delivery with the navel and played with that
part of her body. Her mother gave her some very rudimentary
instruction when she entered school at nine, promising more when
she should be old enough to understand. The promise was never
fulfilled, books and magazines, moreover, were expurgated before
they were given her, and an over-conscientious — ^and compensatory —
obedience to her mother forbade her to seek any ulterior means of
satisfying the curiosity thus stimulated. Her painful experiences
over menstruation as well as her puzzle over what constituted really
modest and proper behavior fostered a growing craving for ade-
quate knowledge and a growing resentment against those who denied
it her. Kempf has noted (in his "Psychology of the Yellow
Jacket," p. 417)" the confidence and reassurance generated in child-
dren who learn the life secret from their parents as contrasted with
the timidity of those who learn from chance vulgarity. In the
patient's adolescent days, the failure of a teacher, whose duty it was
to instruct her charges in sex hygiene, and who passed over the topic
with the remark that she would leave that to their mothers, inten-
11 Loc, cit.
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6 LUCILH DOOLEY
sified the feeling of injury and helplessness that influenced her
failure to develop her sexual life along wholesome lines.
Her attitude toward dolls when she was small showed how at-
tentive she was to all that pertained to babies. She and her sister
wore their dresses buttoned in front in order to nurse their dolls,
and took endless pains with their care. They stirred an emotion in
her that went beyond play. A healthy young woman tells me that
when she was a child she wept with emotion while rocking her doll
to sleep. Our patient, when in her teens, took up a fad, in common
with a group of girls, of caring for the babies of her neighbors.
Her emotions were deeply excited by this ; she felt as if the children
were her own and finally gave up the practice because of its agi-
tating effect. Compare instances, noted in a former paper,^* of
young women with homosexual tendencies who find themselves
unexpectedly weeping at the sight of a child. The emotion here
expressed is at first projected upon the doll, later upon the infant,
and is not the maternal feeling as commonly understood. It is
rather the mirror of the mother-and-self identification, arising
first through sexual gratification at the mother's contact, and
issuing in narcissism and homosexuality, as shown in Trigant
Burrow's recent communication.^* In the feeling the child has
for the doll, we see her identification with her mother, and her pro-
jection of her own individuality upon the doll. It is when the
struggle against auto-erotism, the struggle to free the libido for
better objects, is waging, that the extraordinary emotional effect is
seen, in the childhood age of doll-play, and in the adolescent age of
baby-love. Perhaps these examples of unusual affective behavior
will tend to clarify the principle, set forth by Burrow, that homo-
sexuality and the fixation on the mother, in male and female alike,
are expressions of auto-erotism in subjectivity. For, as we have
seen, the doll and the baby are really representatives of the infantile
self. The girl who is deeply affected by her doll or by the care of
an infant is seeing in it, unconsciously, her own infantile self, which
she is loath to pve up for a higher development. The retrospective
longing for the mother's cherishing, for mother-contact, is thus ex-
pressed in its conflict with the upward and outward trend of growth.
The unusual pains taken with the doll-play in the patient's childhood
12 L. Dooley : A Study of Normal Complexes, p. 135, American Journal of
Psychology, 1916.
^ '' The Genesis and Meaning of Homosexuality, and its Relation to the
Problem of Introverted States," Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. IV, No. 3.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS ^
might well pass as little significant had it not been for the reaction
to infants occurring in her teens. In her psychosis, later, she played
at being a doll, which was to be bom as a baby. I am reminded of
a dream of a young woman of twenty-seven, suffering from a neuro-
sis, in which she saw a child of thirteen playing with a doll and re-
proved by bystanders for childishness. The dreamer defended the
child (who represented herself) saying that to play with dolls at
thirteen was quit6 natural.
A tendency to overweight the effects of sensory stimulation was
strengthened by one or two untoward incidents. At school, when
about ten, she was mortified by an involuntary urination, really un-
avoidable under the circumstances. The painful affect in this case
was increased by her remorse over telling her chum a senseless lie
about the affair. Here began her most distinct feeling of inferiority
to others and her tendency to suffer deep humiliation over the least
failure or mistake. The incident became a t3rpical one to her mind,
recalled whenever she was in an embarrassing situation, but never
spoken of. Could she have discussed it with her mother or teacher,
much of its seriousness would have dissolved. It served to estab-
lish a conditioned reflex for over-affective reactions to stimuli
tending to arouse humiliation.
In her twelfth year a trained nurse suggested to her mother that
her vivid color might indicate the approach of puberty. Her mother,
accordingly, told her, with a show of embarrassment, flushing, and
gulping, something of the expected change. The girl received the
impression that there was something terrifying, shameful, or at least
very unpleasant, in the event, and became hysterical. Afterward
she examined to see if the expected phenomenon, which she under-
stood but imperfectly, had begun, and so formed the habit of mas-
turbation. This habit remained undiscovered by her parents until
the development of the psychosis, and the patient received no cen-
sure, but the habit generated both guilt and further fixation of the
libido upon her own person, dragging it back in its upward climb.
The first menstwation, which did not appear until three years
after the warning was given, by which time the facts imparted were
almost forgotten, came on a day of great stress and fatigue, was
attended by much pain, and consequent terror because the girl feared
that she had committed an indiscretion, and dared not tell her
mother. The unfortunate mental attitude developed at her first in-
struction was further nourished, and the periods, always painful
and often occurring at times when unusual effort was demanded.
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8 LUCILB DOOLEY
were never handled in a sensible way. Rebellion against her lot as
a woman strove with the womanly hopes bom with adolescence,
while a feeling of strangeness and mystery, and of helplessness in
the hands of fate went with it all. Conflicting ideals of character,
bom of her desire to be like her father and of his desire that she
conform to the domestic type, received a reinforcement by opposing
ideas from this struggle between repudiation of and pride in the
feminine role.
Her entrance into a large city high school, at fourteen, pre-
sented to her a complex environment, to which, partly because
of home conditions, inharmonious with the demands of school, and
partly because of a sensitive egoism that demanded more recognition
of her merits than she could here receive, she could not adapt her-
self. She made few friends, because unable to bear small slights,
and compensated by leading her classes in her studies — which, at
this high school, won far less applause than social success would
gain her. The distance between the school and the place at which
she lived made full participation in the social activities of the school
impossible, a situation which she used to explain her humiliating
social isolation until the entrance of her sister, in the third year,
showed its inadequacy. The sister surmounted external obstacles
to pleasurable social life with ease, and won great popularity. A
bom coquette, and less conscientious than the patient, she was dar-
ingly unconventional and evaded her parent's rules, as the patient
longed to do but dared not. This brought to consciousness a strong
sense of her personal inadequacy, which she quickly suppressed with
a reaction of condemnation of her sister. The conflict was manifest
thereafter in her irritability toward her sister, whom she had de-
votedly loved, and in her exaggerated propriety of conduct. She
worried over the slightest lapse, felt self-condemned for the chance
caresses of one or two older men — ^who sometimes put an arm around
her shoulders — ^and feared that she was not normally modest because
she craved attention. Her father preached much of modesty, but
left her at sea as to what constituted modest behavior, and she was
obsessed with the fear of unintentional transgression.
In her seventeenth year occurred the event that fixed the hatred
complex upon her sister while it had an effect upon the patient's
struggling heterosexual development actually traumatic. The sister
taunted her with never having received any love letters. She had
read all the patient's carefully preserved correspondence, and knew.
She declared that the patient could not read her letters. Stung by
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVB PSYCHOSIS 9
the implication, the older girl sought the letters, and stumbled,
instead, upon a sort of diary, kept in silly schoolgirl fashion, which
set forth in plain and unvarnished terms the assumed contrast be-
tween the charms and the successes of the younger and the older.
Full of romantic dreams, as girls of seventeen are, sensitive and
vain moreover, and suffering with the sense of slight and failure, the
patient was shocked into a complete renunciation, so far as outward
efforts went, of the normal social interplay of the sexes, and of
social pleasures in general. She fell back, consciously, upon her
home life, her ambitions to become a good housekeeper and a help
to her mother, and upon the friends of her own sex, where her
sister's rivarly was less apparent and menacing. Unconsciously,
or subconsciously, she reverted to the narcissistic attitude of the
pre-pubertal days. This is the first clearly defined retrogression
that occurred in her development.
Immediately afterward she suffered from an apparently gastric
trouble which was referred to a stomach specialist and treated for
nearly a year by dieting. There is reason to believe that the trouble
was functional, as it did not entirely clear up until the beginning of
outspoken mental disturbance, and that it was due to the patient's
reaction to the series of strong repressions just effected. The foods
that had to be avoided were preferred during her psychosis and
were later analyzed by the patient in relation to her repressed sexual
wishes.
Her only actual love affair, with a boy a year younger than her-
self, to whose feelings she could not respond, precipitated a painful
complex of feeling with regard to marriage. She had been trained
by her parents to look forward to marriage as the one possible career
for a woman, and had taken an interest in domestic arts, while her
tastes were really more for study, literature and art, in order to pre-
pare herself for wifehood. Her own lack of social success, com-
pared with her sister's popularity, led her to wonder if, after all,
she might not miss the goal, and, if she did miss it, what she possibly
could do. These thoughts were rather nebulous until the affair with
the boy in question brought them to mind. She did not care for
him, and he was the only one who cared deeply for her. She feared
marriage and yet felt bound to accept it as the only way to success.
A way out presented itself — ^namely, physical or mental unfitness.
Her menstrual troubles, which had served to fix her attention upon
the sensations of the genital region, indicated to her that she might
not be normal. The struggle with auto-eroticism brought her into
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10 LUCILE DOOLEY
a dreamy, slightly dissociated state, not unnatural in adolescence,
which made her apprehensive of losing her mental balance. Her
grandfather's insanity and her father's eccentricity led to the belief
that she might inherit insanity. She began to suffer with headaches
which she believed to be just like those suffered by both grandfather
and father. The fear of insanity, unconfessed for two years, ob-
sessed her — ^the more strongly because subconsciously it presented
itself as a refuge from her difficulties in growing up and achieving
womanhood.
A factor increasing both physical and mental difficulties, what-
ever its direct effect on the development of the psychosis may have
been, was her infection with syphilis. How or when this occurred
could not be definitely ascertained. The long and intimate psycho-
analysis, during the later months of which the patient gave every
appearance of perfect frankness and good faith, failed to disclose
any sexual delinquency. The presence of the disease was not dis-
covered until the outbreak of the psychosis in the summer of 1916,
when the patient was twenty-one. The history was confused, as
neither the patient nor her family had paid very close attention to
sores about the face or on the genitals, although both had been pres-
ent. While the marriage complex and the sexual fancies evident
in the psychosis led one to suspect a sexual experience, and while
the presence of syphilis is always strong ground for suspicion, it
must be borne in mind that psychoses with sexual complexes at their
base occur, and have been reported, in individuals with no actual
sexual experience, and that syphilis is known to be contracted in
innocent ways. In this case it appears that it must have been con-
tracted before she was eighteen, and there is a possibility that the
primary lesion was at the mouth. The skin about the mouth
" hardened and peeled." The genitals also were sore, however. It
is unfortunate that exact information as to the occasion of the in-
fection cannot be obtained, but it need not prevent our dealing with
the psychological effects of the disease. The patient knew nothing
of its nature but was troubled by the condition of her skin and by
the soreness in the perineal region. She felt that the latter meant
something seriously wrong but did not suspect an infection. Rather
she construed it as a part of her menstrual difficulty, and thus in-
creased her feeling of inferiority and of unfitness for her womanly
destiny. The preoccupation with these fears — of mental and phys-
ical disease, of marriage, and, conversely, of non-marriage — ^led to
a loss of interest in her studies, a difficulty in keeping her attention
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS II
upon them, and a syndrome of psychogenic physical disturbances
collectively termed "nervous breakdown," following which she left
school, early in 1913, in her senior year. She was now eighteen.
The backward trend toward infantile dependence reached, in its
furthest, subconscious development, to the desire for complete ease
and rest from conflict represented by death. Death-lonpngs, vague
at first, were crystallized by an accident in the summer of 191 5.
The patient came near drowning, and, though much frightened at
the time, the instinct of self-preservation asserting itself, afterward
felt no longer the fear of death that had been almost an obsession
during the time that her longing for such release had been barred
from the daylight of consciousness. Death by water is particularly
closely related to the unconscious longing for return to the mother,
as Jung has explained in his Psychology of the Unconscious. The
many fancies of the patient, during her psychosis, about water, and
her swimming movements, were determined both by this actual Oc-
currence with its affective accompaniment and by the unconscious,
perhaps racially implanted, association pointed out by Jung.
She also conceived a desire to become a Quaker or a nun — ^an-
other way of escaping the responsibilities of womanhood. This idea
lasted far into her psychosis.
In September, 191 5, she had a curettage, in order to relieve her
sufferings at the menstrual period. The physician apparently did
not discover her syphilitic infection. In December and January she
suffered from eyestrain, due, she thought, to too much fancy-work,
and dropped most of her occupations. This brought about a period
of brooding in which she viewed her life, saw herself as a failure,
blamed her parents, foresaw insanity, and desired more than ever
to die. Aside from this immediate result of the temporary disuse
of her eyesight, there was a subconscious relation to her central
trouble, that of sexual inferiority, that may have been partly the
cause of the breakdown at the point of vision, and almost certainly
exaggerated the symptoms. This was her subconscious association
of the eye with the sexual organs, and her infantile fixation of eye
libido, by which she found much of her pleasure in visual sensations,
particularly in colors. The eyes partook of the diseased condition
affecting the other organs, and an exaggerated importance was as-
signed to the ailment. She feared blindness, haif welcomed the
prospect as a release from responsibility, and allowed the eye con-
dition to interfere more with her activity than was necessary. In
her psychosis, later, she fancied herself in a hospital for the blind,
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12 LUCILB DOOLEY
and wove fancies about injuries to the eyes, as we shall see. At the
time of the eye-trouble, the psychic result was an intensifying of
the feeling of physical inadequacy, the core of which was a realiza-
tion of sexual delinquency, for which she would punish herself by
sacrificing her eyes.
She began to suffer from insomnia, explained by herself as due
to bad thoughts. She meant the preoccupation with the sexual ques-
tion, which pressed her for solution, bringing with it the regression
of the affective life to the childhood level of perverse sexual satis-
factions. There was some retardation in thinking, which caused the
patient grave anxiety, but no loss of touch with her environment.
She made an effort to gain independence from parental domination
by demanding an allowance, and obtained her wishes, but unfortu-
nately her remorse over the rebellion against her father counter-
acted beneficial effects. She could not escape his spiritual dom-
ination.
A further acute realization of her failure came in the spring of
1915 with the visit of a girl of her own age, from a distant part of
the country, and her sister's graduation from school. She saw that
these two girls, by very different routes, had attained successful
womanhood, whereas she, with an equal chance, had remained a
child, unable to assert herself, unable to claim any marked success
in any important line, and, above all, in her mind, unable to take the
first steps toward the goal of womanhood, which is marriage and
maternity. Distinctly psychotic disturbances now made their ap-
pearance, for the first time. She asked her parents to kill her, as she
could never be any good, she spent much energy upon useless work,
and she suffered constantly from insomnia.
She overheard her parents discussing her on one occasion in a
way that himiiliated her beyond reason. One of them said, in a hor-
rified undertone, " Suppose she should be joined with a — ." She
never could recall the word used, and probably misunderstood it,
whatever it was, but she knew it referred to the possibility of her
marriage with an unfit person. She felt as if her own parents were
hereby classing her with girls of low character and casting her off,
and she felt unspeakably degraded. The ambivalence of feeling, on
the other hand, brought into play, by this incident, the already robust
tendency toward the lower forms of sexual satisfaction, stimulating
day dreams of a sensual nature, in which her father played a part.
The incident completed the estrangement from both parents, which
had been developing throughout her adolescence, compensated as it
was by over-submissiveness to them.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 1 3
A second curettage and dilatation of the cervix was tried in June,
1916, which was followed by the first definite formation of delusions,
originating, probably, while the patient was under ether, though
shaped by the fantasy tendencies just noted. She thought the opera-
tion was an assault, that the instrument used was a cross, and that
its purpose was to cure her of masturbation. The seriousness of
her mental condition was now recognized and she was taken to a
sanatorium, where she failed to improve. She made three attempts
at suicide, by swallowing glass, mercury and a needle. Taken home
again, she was put under the treatment of a Qiristian Scientist,
who, for the first time, dealt frankly with sexual matters and ob-
tained a confession of masturbation. The religious and mystical
element in the treatment served to aggravate the delusions, however.
The patient fancied herself about to become a virgin mother, dressed
herself all in white and waited, in the house of the practitioner, for
the great event that was to make her the Savior of the Race. It was
a final attempt, in the dream world, attempts in the world of reality
having failed, to achieve emancipation from the infantile auto-erotic
fixation of the libido by an expansion through her identification of
herself with the race, at the same time saving herself from the sac-
rifice actually demanded by shutting out a htunan agency, substi-
tuting instead a miraculous impregnation. The delusion of preg-
nancy was fostered by the fact that her menses were suppressed
during the summer.
Her inability to sleep caused her to wander out at night, in an
attempt to find relief and diversion from her nervous tension. On
one occasion her father brought her back by force, saying " I will
conquer you." This crystallized her fear of him and brought to full
consciousness a portion of the sexual complex centering about her
father which had long been pressing nearer and nearer to the light
of clear mental vision. Her recoil from this horrible thing involved
her more deeply in fantasy and in poorly directed compensatory
activities. The fact that he seized her by the arm became the focus
of her fear of him, as it had its ambivalent pleasure-motive to her,
as a female, of satisfaction in being physically overpowered. She
developed an antipathy to being touched, which was also partly
determined by the forcible administration of an enema.
Not realizing, at this time, as fully as she had in the early part
of the year, the seriousness of her condition, she was planning to
enter a school of art on the first of October. Her parents did not
discourage this until the time for entrance arrived, when they told
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14 LUCILE DOOLEY
her the plan was impossible. She felt that they treated her as a
child, that she would have been reasonable had they dealt with her
frankly, and that this sort of treatment placed her definitely, in the
eyes of others, as an inferior person. The situation parsdleled so
closely the experiences of earlier adolescence, in which she had been
made to feel her inferiority, and especially the occasion of the finding
of her sister's diary with its humiliating result, that an explosive
outburst, in which the jealousy of her sister appeared as the central
motive, occurred. She talked of her sister's blue eyes, of her blue
clothes, rummaged her bureau drawers to find materials from which
to make her sister a party gown, and attempted to put in order all
her possessions, as a symbolic reformation of her own character.
She tore sheets and blankets, refused to wear shoes, and could be
managed by no one except her sister.
Her menses had reappeared, after suppression during the sum-
mer, on October third. It was at this date that she experienced her
humiliation with regard to entering the Art School. No immediate
reaction was apparent, but ten days later, on October 13, the first
maniacal symptoms, of incoherent speech and press of activity, were
noted. Her subsequent excitements have much the same temporal
relation to the menstrual period. In this excited state, on October
17, 1916, she was admitted to this hospital, after two days in a gen-
eral hospital where she was unmanageable.
Ill
The excitement, during which she talked incoherently, showed
flight of ideas, distractibility, shouted, made speeches, danced, re-
fused to wear clothing, tore up sheets and blankets, and went
through numerous meaningful motions of the limbs, lasted two
weeks. It was followed by two weeks of comparative quiet, with
little conduct disorder, and an emotional state of depression, the
later not being severe enough to affect her conduct in ordinary
matters. In this quiet interval she underwent the routine mental
examination very creditably and was readily accessible. She was
greatly interested in her environment and took keen note of every-
thing, as she had during the excitement.
Her general physical condition was good. There was a slight
yellowish vaginal discharge, negative for gonococci. The Wasser-
mann reaction with blood serum was double plus, with cerebrospinal
fluid negative. She has subsequently received salvarsan treatment,
with latest Wassermann reaction plus minus.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 1 5
For six months following her admission to the hospital an ex-
citement occurred two weeks before the appearance of the menses,
and subsided with the beginning of the menstrual flow. The excite-
ment would b^n with euphoria, a conviction that her problem was
solved, and a great press of activity. She would write letters to all
her friends, magazine articles, stories, poems and plays, or make
water color sketches, sew and embroider, work at French transla-
tions, talk and laugh excitedly, but, for a day or two, show no
conduct disorder. Repeated observation helped out by subsequent
analysis established that in these first days she was in the mental
state of her early adolescence. It seemed that she had gone back to
the point where her difficulties first became pressing, and was trying
again to find her way out by the roads that she had tried then, with-
out satisfactory results. She dressed herself with care and neatness,
but youthfully, preferring a middy blouse or a smock and a short
skirt, and arranging her hair in moving-picture curls. In a day or
two more, her dress became fantastic, she wore a flower over her
left ear (see below), pinned and tied flowers, ribbons, and odds and
ends over her dress, sometimes powdered her hair or filled it with
soap, and refused to wear shoes. She ran, instead of walking,
laughed very loudly, sang, sat upon the floor, collected useless scraps
of cloth, paper, etc., played with them, and told of the wonderful
uses to which she was going to put them. This appeared to be the
childish stage of her regression.
After three or four days of this, her dress became untidy. She
kept wet towels next to her body, was always washing her clothes,
sometimes without removing them, and spent hours cleaning the
bathroom and toilet, saying this was the place to begin. During her
first two or three excitements, she sometimes struck the people
around her in the back and overturned furniture, but later, when in
the depressed intervals, she began to gain insight, she showed no
anger reactions until a deeper stage of the excitement was reached.
She would now begin to tear her clothing, destroy articles in the
room with a view to making something else of them, resist the
nurses, throw her dishes about, and be untidy in her habits. An-
other accompaniment of this stage was a mania for "interpretive
dancing " which she liked especially to practice in the hydrotherapy
room, whither she went twice daily for pack, shower and spray.
While in this phase, which lasted a week or more, she was usually
secluded in a room in which there was no furniture except her bed
She would wear no clothes, but liked to have some by her to put on
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1 6 LUCILE DOOLEY
when doctors or nurses came in, for she never became indifferent
to environment and was always ashamed to be found unclothed.
She tore her blankets into strips and wove and tied them into the
fantastic savage dress probably well known to all psychiatrists. She
banged her bed against the door until her bedstead had to be re-
moved. She tore the stuffing out of her mattress and slit her cotton
pad, getting all the cylindrical cotton rolls out of it, and sometimes
creeping inside the slit cover. She tore the colored stripes out of
the blankets and used them for head bands. (For the significance
of her actions see below.) She answered voices that at first seemed
to be hallucinated, but afterwards it was found that they were actual
sounds heard and misinterpreted. She noted the actions of those
about her to the smallest detail, but seldom, unless taken by surprise,
would vouchsafe any direct recognition of them. For example, she
would say " Good morning " to the doctor, and would hurriedly put
on a garment, then making no response to further remarks, would
pursue her own line of talk, interrupting it with such comments as
" She (the doctor) has brown shoes on. Now she's turning to the
window, now to the door," and taking up the doctor's words into
her own stream. In a little while she would become silent, close her
eyes, put her hands on her head and make movements with hands
and head that were of a symbolic nature, and which she intended
as a sign language to some one who would be able to understand.
If her visitor stayed long she might become angry. When no one
was in her room she could be heard making loud speeches, singing,
and at times striking the wall with a towel or sheet or with her
hands. This striking was intended for a signal to the people outside
who were supposed to be working with her in a great international
plot.
She was usually untidy in these excitements, and in two of them
rubbed her excreta into the floor and into her body, as she also did
her food, mixing them together.
The appearance of the menses regularly put an end to this hyper-
manic state. She became inactive, remained in bed for two or three
days, had persecutory ideas and was inclined to be irritable with
everyone about her. Traces of the fantasies that had swayed her
for the past two weeks remained, but she was now the passive suf-
ferer from the machinations of others. This paranoid state always
lasted for two or three days and gave way to one of great weariness
and depression, with an access of insight which became greater and
clearer with each succeeding month, after analysis had begun.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 1 7
During the depressed state, after the first two months, there was
no conduct disorder and one would not have known from her speech
or action that the fantasies still dwelt at the back of her mind. They
formed the content of her night dreams, however, and so came to
the knowledge of the psychoanalyst, while others thought her men-
tally dear, though sad, silent and often hysterical, weeping much,
and giving an occasional involuntary wail, followed by a laugh.
She recalled the extravagant behavior of the preceding weeks with
shame and humiliation, but was despondent about ever getting any
better. She took little interest in her former pursuits and cared only
to work for others, mending for the ward, knitting for the Navy
League, and helping other patients. She preferred to dress plainly
in the hospital gingham or percale, and arranged her abundant curly
hair in the simplest possible manner. The idea of being a nun or a
Quaker, which took possession after her final realization that her
efforts to adapt herself to society were failures thus manifested
itself again after her new attempts, at successively lower levels, to
assert her worth once more. The feeling of aloofness, of being
outcast, worthless and, above all, of having lived her life and be-
come old (at 21 ) permeated her being in these days.
At these times she took up psychoanalysis with hope, and clung
to it for comfort, although she often retreated for a time, before a
threatened painful disclosure. Toward January, or after her third
excitement, the results of analysis began to show. The monthly
cycle described in the foregoing continued to nm its course but
there was a sharper differentiation between the manic and the de-
pressed states. Fantasy and reality were less confused together.
There were considerable periods when she was free from fantasy,
and after these fancies had again taken possession, they were for
some time recognized as unreal. It was only in the days of seclu-
sion, when there was little distraction from outside, that they be-
came wholly real. It is true, however, that they were more real, in
the few days they lasted, during the last three months of her
psychosis, than they were during the first three, when fantasy and
reality were intermixed in varying proportion throughout the
monthly cycle. At that time it was like a game or play to her,
in which she was at once actor and spectator.
The last excitement, which was the seventh, occurred in April,
191 7, and was much milder in type than the others. It began sim-
ilarly and ran through what I have called the adolescent and child-
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X8 LUCILa DOOLEV
hood stages, but very little into the archaic. She dressed herself in
fantastic costumes, like a child dressing up, but never became untidy,
noisy or destructive and never had to be secluded. This attack was
much more like a typical manic excitement, except that there was
little flight or incoherence, though much distractibility. She took a
great interest in the people about her, made pencil sketches of them,
took notes on the behavior of certain patients for her doctor, sewed
and knitted at times, and was always pleasant and agreeable.
The excitement of March, just preceding this one, had been the
severest of any, and upon emerging from it she told me that she
knew she had struck bottom and could never go so far down again.
Her prognosis proved correct. While the next month brought an
excitement, it was of the mild type described above, and it was
indeed the last. It cleared up in the usual way, givii^ place to the
typical depression. Psychoanalysis now made great headway, and
care was taken to provide the patient with helpful employment, such
as gardening. Red Cross work, and out-of-door recreations. She
soon became interested and steadily improved until August, 1917,
when, ten months after her admission to the hospital, she was per-
fectly recovered and was able to take up an active life at home again.
She has since entered college. Suicidal obsessions and general de-
spondency oppressed her until June, but after that the normal cheer-
fulness that already was instilled into her external behavior by vol-
untary effort took possession of her inner life also and grew into
the enthusiasm and zest in life suitable to her age.
The patient was able to cooperate in her own analysis to a very
remarkable degree, practically niakii^ it herself, after her confidence
was won, the part of the analyst being to stimulate the recovery of
forgotten material by suggesting possible connections. The under-
lying ideation of the excited activities was brought up by free asso-
ciation with few suggestions from outside. The activities of the
higher level, adolescence, necessarily were founded upon ideas per-
sisting from the earlier stages of development, but found free ex-
pression in reactions typical of her adolescent years. Likewise, the
other two stages recognized, with intermediate stages, are so clas-
sified with reference to the reaction type and to the degfree of men-
tal integration and complexity present. Though the stages overlap,
the material can be most clearly presented by arranging it under the
heads: Adolescent, Infantile and Archaic.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS I9
ly
Adolescent Activities
The " Clothes Problem" — ^The patient usually began her excite-
ment by waking in the morning with a feeling of euphoria and the
sense that she had made a long step in solving her problems. This
announcement, tc^ether with her beaming expression and flushed
cheek, came to be the signal of the approaching excitement. The
problem which she first attacked and triumphantly solved was the
" Qothes Problem/' This had, in the course of nature, been one of
the early and persistent interests of her adolescent high school days.
Not only lack of money, but, presenting a more serious obstacle to
her, her father's ideas about suitable clothes, had prevented her
dressing in a manner equal to her mates. She had learned to sew,
and often made herself pretty things, but at other times found this
too taxing, and, to allay her discontent, forced herself to a super-
ficial acquiescence in her father's views, and was simple, uncon-
ventional, and even careless in her dress, as her father himself was.
This, like other phases of adolescent feeling, found its root in her
infantile tendency to imitate and emulate her father in all possible
ways. Now, at the opening of her excitement, she designed new cos-
tumes, ripped up old garments with the intention of making them
over into new and astonishingly beautiful creations, and even de-
signed and recommended ravishing toilettes for her favorite physi-
cians and nurses. She planned for a prize contest in garment-
making to be carried on through her father's magazine in which the
garments were to be made by her design, to her measure, em-
broidered with her initials. The successful contestant was to re-
ceive a subscription to the magazine while the patient retained all
the garments, thus happily furnishing her wardrobe at no expense !
The new clothes were ostensibly her outfit for college, but the un-
expressed purpose in her mind was to get a trousseau. The deeper
relation of the " Clothes Problem " to the life problem is, of course,
not to be passed over. In dreams and fantasies, as well as in speech,
the clothes represent the man. And it is significant that she began
with underclothes, " the place to begin " she said, and made the proc-
ess of redothing her body the symbol of a rehabilitation of her per-
sonality.
The Bridal Dress. — When the fantasy gained a little more head-
way, the patient began to adorn herself with flowers, with ribbons,
with bright-hued silk stockings, her white slippers and her neatest
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20 LUCILE DOOLEY
dresses. This was long afterward admitted to be for her ex-
pected bridal, though she never even indirectly alluded to this at the
time. The prospective bridegroom was not always the same. After
she had been at the hospital for a time, it became one of the physi-
cians. She thought at first that her journey to the hospital was a
wedding trip, then later construed the mystery that seemed to sur-
round her as preparation for the great trip, but she spoke of it only
as a "trip" and did not confess that she had in mind a wedding
trip until after psychoanalysis had been carried on for some time.
The statement was entirely spontaneous, however.
Games. — In connection with her marriage fantasies comes a
rather clever allusion to the problem in connection with baseball.
Often closely following her attack on the Clothes Problem would
come a great revival of her high-school interest in this game. She
would recall the school matches and dilate with enthusiasm on the
qualities of players and teams. She would begin to plan for a girls'
team, of which she should be captain. She was to take second base
because that '' and not third base, as most people think, is really the
"hardest." Second base was marriage, third base death, in the great
life diamond where birth, marriage and death are the landmarks
between leaving and reaching again the Home Plate. A second
meaning given was second as the female number, harder than the
male.
While she was still in school her tense interest in the games, and
her sufferings if her school lost, passed the bounds of the normal.
The game was already a symbol of her own tragic struggle with
the difficulty of managing her own sexual trends, and of reconciling
her own innate desires and ambitions to the different ones imposed
on her by her parents. In planning for her team, she determined to
practice what the others couldn't do and above aU to "sacrifice,"
which is a naive way of escaping defeat. At school she enjoyed
basketball but was never very successful, because she was awkward,
in spite of her muscular strength.
Another high-school activity to which her interest returned simul-
taneously with the baseball preoccupation was the debate. She had
been in a debating society and had been chosen to take part in a
contest with a rival society. One of her hard times, physically, was
the result of her overwork in preparation for this occasion. Her
interest in debates originally sprang from her father-fixation, as he,
in his capacity of editor, engaged in controversies. Also he encour-
aged and helped her in her own debates. The underlying motive
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 21
of her interest, however, was really the contest with her father him-
self. Her important debate was on Woman Suffrage, against which
her father held decided opinions.
Pageants and Poems. — In all the activities of school days which
now occupied her, the purpose was to go back to the starting point
and win where she had lost before. One of the best creations of her
fantasy belonging to the adolescent phase of the excitement was a
literary composition which she called a pageant, though it was rather
a mixture of operetta, fairy-pantomime and pageant. The scenes
included woodland dells, waterfalls, nymphs and flowers, with her-
self as the heroine, a child of nature about which the whole action
centered. She was awakened by the hero with a kiss, and there
were dances and love lyrics of a most satisfactory nature. Only
" graduates " were to take part and the president of the class must
play the role of hero. (The president is a father-personality.)
But on another occasion she "boycotted graduation." While this
might, because of its frank egoism and its idealized fairyland setting,
be called a creation of childhood, the love story in it, which was the
principal part, much more closely resembled the day dream of the
girl of fourteen. Withal it was a truly artistic creation, and fur-
nished an outlet for the unsatisfied desires that proved serviceable.
The patient's sister had often taken a prominent part in the school
plays, as she danced and sang well, while the patient herself was
awkward and self-couscious. Hence, in making herself the chief
actress in a setting of idyllic beauty she outdid her sister, and lived
her part in a most delightful romance besides.
Another way in which she expressed her problem in literary
fashion was through the characters of King Arthur's Court. This
idea had obsessed her for some time and appeared in her earlier
stream of talk, in which she called herself Elaine the Lily Maid,
and spoke of Arthur or " Ar-thermometer, a thing by which to
measure or correct." But these two were used as a blind, the really
important characters were not mentioned until the third month, after
psychoanalysis had begun. She then wrote out a series of character
studies in which Lancelot, " perfect comrade-brother-lover-hus-
band," was her father, Lynnette, her sister, and she herself was
Guinevere. Her mother was not included. The role of Guinevere
was played in the deepest phase of the excitement, also, when she
had quite descended to the archaic. She felt that she did not wish
to be Guinevere at all, but that she was forced to play this part,
really too complicated for her, to her father's Lancelot. Hence she
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22 LUCILE DOOLEY
tried to pretend to be Elaine, while secretly despising that innocent
and childish person, whom she considered incomplete and unde-
veloped. A stenogram taken when she talked to herself yet was
aware of listeners showed her attitude toward her own situation as
typified by the poem. " I'm Elaine, the Lily Maid, from the Idylls
of the King. That is my favorite book next to the Bible. Maybe I
like it better than the Bible. I believe every word in it. I want
first aid, the quickest way, the dearest way, the way of love. Real-
ity, a house of glass. Everyone can see. I'm innocent, not ignorant,
and I do not want things said that a young girl should not hear.
No, I don't know. A cat has nine tails. Please let all the married
women leave the room. They are not pure. Innocent girls have
been ridiculed long enough. People who do not know arithmetic
should not attempt algebra, trigonometry or surveying. I am the
radius of the circle, a Greek letter, always the unknown. Ignorance.
Any way you want to construe it, ignorance or innocence. I don't
want anything said before me that should not be said before an inno-
cent young girl. Delta pi delta. I am the eternal triangle. Mary
Magdalene, the eternal triangle, green, innocent." (For the sake of
brevity I have omitted external associations that interrupted this.)
The complex centering about her unsatisfied sexual curiosity,
which is usually resolved in childhood, here has been preserved into
womanhood, while the sense of guilt it generates expresses itself in
fancies about Mary Magdalene, prostitution wishes, etc. The tri-
angle naturally represents the Electra complex. Of her color and
number fantasies more will be said in another connection. She
studied all the branches of mathematics she mentions, including sur-
veying, which only two other girls of her class took up, as it is a
boy's subject. The symbolism of mathematics for the patient is
more fully taken up in the portion dealing with archaic activities.
One more of the activities of the adolescent phase is selected out
of a great mass of them before passing on to the more infantile
modes of reaction. This was her love of questioning those about
her as to their tastes, propensities, preferences, etc. This was called
"psychoanalyzing" by the patient, and, by the way, makes an in-
teresting point in the study of the transference, being her way of
beating her doctor at her own game, but its ultimate significance
was the comparison of herself with others to see if, after all, she
were so very far off the track. This belongs to the age of self-con-
sciousness, which is not fully achieved until adolescence. Her in-
tense desire, wakened most strongly when she entered the new en-
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 23
vironment of high school, to know how other families lived, may be
recalled.
This activity has another side, illustrating the adolescent prep-
aration for choosing a mate. The tendency is extended to her en-
vironment. She soon felt the impossibility, however, of getting
away from the father-fixation sufficiently to choose, and sank, in-
fluenced by this among other inadequacies, to the lower level of
childhood, where her fantasy about her father and her own sex life
might have freer play.
Infantile Fantasies
The Father Complex, — ^A story that haunted her when in the
second stage of her excitements, and which returned in the dreams
of the depressed periods, was Victor Hugo's "By Order of the
King" ("LTiomme qui Rit" in the original). This is a story of a
man who was frightfully deformed when a child, by order of the
king, who wished to take vengeance on his family. She identified
herself with the victim, her father being the king who had com-
pressed and deformed her spirit for the gratification of his wishes.
(One would naturally suspect some form of sexual handling had
taken place, as in the case of Frink's,^* but I failed to find any evi-
dence of such.)
Another fancy, half delusion, half day dream, was that she was
in the kaiser's palace, a prisoner. Her psychoanalyst (the writer)
was to rescue her and adopt her. The kaiser is the father, the
psychoanalyst a mother personality, but not her mother. In her
depressed periods she sometimes dreamed of being captured by the
kaiser, and tortured. The patient had no difficulty in seeing for her-
self the expression of the father-complex in these dreams. Other
dreams and delusions, reproducing the bad dreams of early child-
hood, were of robbers and burglars creeping toward the house. For
a long time she could not bear to look at the cartoons of the kaiser,
as they touched so near the heart-breaking conflict over her father.
The identification of her father with the kaiser brings an elaborate
international drama which she worked out as a grandiose epitome of
her situation. In this, however, Russia, as the country before the
present war conceived as exemplif3ring absolutism in government,
became the paternal representative, while Germany represented the
maternal side because her mother was of German descent. She also
^^Frink, H. N.: A Psychoanalytic Study of a Case of Compulsion
Neurosis, Psychoanalytic Review, Nos. i, 2, 3, 1917.
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24 LUCILE DOOLEY
found her way out of her difficulties in the usual childish way of
imagining herself a royal infant, stolen by her supposed parents.
She was then a princess of Alsace-Lorraine — ^the country of com-
bined Teutonic and French nationalities — and was to become pres-
ident of that land, and end the war. So, she would rule over both
father and mother. Her father was not of French descent but he
loved France and she thought him, as well as herself, French in his
characteristics. France was the favored country always, in her
numerous international fabrications, but one source of the fascina-
tion of France was the identification with an athlete, hero of her
later childhood, whose first name was Francis, and about whom she
wove many fancies in her period of awakening sexuality. He repre-
sents the heterosexual trend at its best.
She divided her room into different countries, giving to France
the space by the window "where the beautiful light came from,"
and assigning the right-hand upper corner to Russia. Here her bed
was placed by the nurses ; she often moved it because her bed ought
not to be in Russia (father's room). Or again she fancied it con-
cealed by a curtain, and so all right. A comer was sometimes given
to Holland, identified with the mother, whose name was Wilhelmina.
America had a comer but was not of much importance, as it did not
belong to the family. Japan represented the cmelty of women to
women in underhand ways and was sister or mother interchangeably.
The study of the determination of these national S3rmbolisms would
make a thesis in itself. I can only just mention them briefly here
as an example of the way in which her great conflict and dominating
complex expanded to take in the whole world, of which she, nat-
urally, was the center.
In a dream, the father once played the combined roles of stage
manager and villain, comparable to her conception of the kaiser, and
more outspoken. Again she had a conscious fantasy of her father
committing a crime, of the nature of Harry Thaw's, and of another
man taking his place. A second fantasy that endeavored at once to
conceal and reveal her repressed wish for her father was her marry-
ing him to his own half-sister, for whom she was named. She had
been jealous of her father's devotion to this sister, on her mothet^s
account, had also thought this aunt more like her than her mother
was. To give the father to a relative in this way was a defiance of
the incest tabu, while yet she dared not boldly put herself in the place
she coveted.
In the first manic attack, while still at home, she stole her
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 2$
mother's wedding ring. At first she explained this as motived by
the desire to prove to herself that her parents were really married,
but after a further analysis she gave a truer explanation — ^that she
wished to oust her mother and claim the place for herself.
Later in the psychosis came a distressing dream that she and
her mother were somehow duplicating each other. One of the little
family jokes had been a playful fiction that the father and the two
children were the A family and that the mother had married
into it. After reaching puberty the patient became very remorseful
over this, and over the affectionate ridicule with which they some-
times treated the quaint, gentle, patient little mother. It was one of
the things that made her feel that her family was different from
others. This overweighting of a slight matter was, naturally, a
compensation for her secret enmity against her mother, and her de-
sire to supplant her. The latter desire was again strikingly expressed
in the delusion, cherished in the early months of the psychosis, that
she was pr^^nant, and had already borne two children who were
identified with the two babies her mother lost in infancy.
Very late in the psychosis, when all the symptoms of mania had
disappeared, and only a slight depression remained, she dreamed
that her real mother had come to her, taken hold of her and said
" Now we are going to straighten things out." This " real " dream
mother was not her actual mother, nor anyone known to her, but
by this time she was solving her complex and coming to a more com-
fortable understanding with her parents.
Not always did the fancies and actions centering about the fix-
ation upon her father have an unpleasant tinge. She imitated him
in many things, becoming, in the infantile stage of her monthly ex-
citement, an editor like him, tearing up papers for clippings and
offering all those around her positions on his staff. She declared
that she did ever3rthing in a man's way, that she did not care how
she looked (cf. adolescent "Qothes Problem"), and that her pur-
pose in life was to help her father run his paper. She dressed her-
self as a Russian peasant, which country she had, as we have seen,
assigned to her father. One manifest origin of this was the cir-
cumstance of the family being often taken for Russian but never for
American, when they travelled abroad. Just before Christmas she
dressed herself as a doll, giving herself in fancy to the two hospital
physicians that she liked best, placing them in the parent role, and
half imagining that she was to be bom as a human child at Christ-
mas. This is reaching into the archaic, but lies among the childish
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26 LUCILE DOOLEY
fancies too. We must recall the childhood reaction to dolls and the
adolescent reaction to babies for the full significance of this.
Closely related to the father-complex is the attachment to the
grandfather, a parent with whom there is less of conflict than with
the father. Attachment to the paternal grandfather in the patient's
case was strong, and equally strong, later, was her fear that she
might become insane like him. When behaving childishly in her
phychosis, she used to tear a piece from a gray blanket so as to form
a shawl which she fastened about her shoulders. This turned out to
be the reproduction of a tender memory of her grandfather. Once
when the patient was tiiree years old her grandfather had allowed
her to choose what she wanted in a shop, and she chose a little gray
shawl. She prized this gift highly, as it was the last he gave her
before he became ill. It typified all his protecting kindness and
indulgence then and later, when her sorrow and bewilderment in
her troubles made her turn back to the protecting care received from
one who was always indulgent — a grandparent. Comparison with
MacCurdy's patient who was impregnable if wrapped in flannel,
the garb of infancy, representing also the life within the mother,
might not be out of place, but this anaysis was not made with the
patient.
Infantile Curiosity. — Closely related to the father-complex, but
not necessarily integral with it, is the curiosity a child feels about
life processes and the mysteries of adults. A fancy that ran through
several excited periods in this case was that of being a spy in the
enemy's country. The country was usually Germany (parent's
country) while the patient belonged to France (heterosexual life).
Spies are spied upon, and so the nurses and doctors were considered
spies. A joke often dwelt upon with laughter but never explained
was that "Children let out all the secrets." In revenge, she had
secrets of her own. She talked much of how she was " beating peo-
ple at their own game." Her family were spies upon her, common
folk, while she was royal. She dwelt much upon a fairy tale read
in childhood, of the maid who misled the king, leading him down a
stairway and out through the wrong passages, while the lord whom
he was pursuing escaped. This story would furnish material for an
elaborate analysis, both in itself and in its relation to our patient,
who incorporated it in her fantasy. Aware now, in her psychosis,
of her inability to attain full womanhood, she has come back to one
of the first poignant realizations of childish inferiority, and in her
retreat backward she adopts her first crude effort to compensate for
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 27
the inferiority. She resorts to conceahnent as a defense for her
weakness in coping with an adult world.
Narcissism. — ^The infantile trait of narcissism was shown both
in its primary form, of dressing-up, exposing the body, and con-
stantly combing the hair, and in the secondary form of conceit and
grandiosity. She reverted in memory to frolics in the water with a
playmate, to times when the usual conventional restraints were
thrown off, as in camp life or when girls spent the night with each
other. She declared that bathing suits were the ideal costume,
tucked her skirts up short, took off her shoes, was willfully careless
of exposing herself, yet not to the point of positive indecency when
on the ward. She gave away her clothes to her fellow patients, feel-
ing that she no longer wanted such artificial coverings. The great
pleasure taken in posing and in dancing was one of her most striking
exhibitions of the narcissistic fixation. This was practiced most
often in the hydrotherapy rooms, where her costume could be ar-
ranged from sheets and towels for the desired effect. Much speech-
making and singing was reminiscent of childish plays at being
grown-up, in which she of course took an exalted place, as that of
president or queen. She fancied, when making patriotic declama-
tions alone in her room, that there were applauding throngs outside.
This is akin to the exhibitionist dreams common to all, where " many
people" present stands for the desire to exhibit the person to the
whole world, and thus to obtain power over the whole world.
Auto-erotic manifestations belong, because of the primitive
nature of their symbolic expression, to the archaic stratum, which
I propose to treat separately, but some few outcroppings are on the
more conscious level that corresponds to the infantile stage of men-
tal development. Her great interest in cleaning the bathroom during
the infantile stage of her excitement, for example, took the place
of the actual play with her excreta practiced when the psychosis
dropped to a lower level. The interest in excreta was at this point
censured by social consciousness, the interest and the self-condemna-
tion for that interest find a common expression, therefore, in indus-
triously scrubbing up the place devoted to the uses of the toilet.
She said that this was the place to begin cleaning, recognizing the
fundamental and primal nature of the instinct with which she bat-
tled. The preoccupation with the perverse sense-pleasure of the
anal region expressed itself also as a fear, once experienced in child-
hood, that she would be attacked from behind, or "struck in the
back." In the earlier excitements she struck others in the back, with
the idea, again, of beating them at their own game.
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28 LUCILE DOOLEY
A Strongly affective complex of fear and wish fantasy centered
about her feet. The foot is recognized, by all who have gone much
into the analysis of dreams, as a substitute symbol for the male
genital organ. The young child, whether male or female, does not
usually know its own sex before four years of age (see Binet) and
the girl may fancy herself like her father as readily as the boy
fancies his mother like himself. Her foot became to the patient a
particularly sacred object, which no one must touch. She would
not keep her shoes on, but could not bear to have anyone else touch
the shoes, feeling that if they did so they encroached upon her sacred
person. The slipper is recognized as the symbol of the female gen-
ital as the foot is of the male. Her discarding of the shoes may thus
be taken as an act symbolic of an infantile rejection of the female
role, while her jealousy of them shows, in addition to her unwilling-
ness to be encroached upon or interfered with by outsiders, an un-
willingness to relinquish the sexual role which really was hers. Two
childhood experiences had contributed to fix the foot as a symbol in
this case. She had, when six or seven years old, run a nail into her
foot and had been carried home by one of her father's employees.
The fright and pain, followed by the pleasure of being taken up and
carried, had made this one of the type experiences to which she
attached in future years both experiences of like aflFective content,
and dreams. In her room at the hospital there was a nail in the
floor that fascinated her. She was afraid of it, afraid of hurting
herself upon it, yet afraid to have it taken out. She felt sure that it
was put there for a purpose, that it had an important message for
her. She could hardly feel that it was accidental. Its meaning was
the meaning that had come to invest the accident occurring in child-
hood, a meaning that typified a whole sexual experience, the inthrust
of the nail in the foot, pleasurable and painful in retrospection at
once as an assault might be, followed by the surrender of the self
to a stronger hand involved in the act of being carried home. This
memory arose when the male physician occasionally entered her
room on his rounds. She would throw herself backward, in com-
plete surrender.
The other experience in childhood centering an affective reaction
upon shoes and feet was an imgratified longing for white shoes,
which all the other children were wearing and which her parents
denied her. She spent a great deal of thought upon devising a way
to make some white shoes of a piece of white satin that her mother
possessed. This ungratified wish, like others, trivial in themselves,
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 29
came to be the type of other ungratified desires, and here is still
another determinant of her jealousy of having her shoes touched.
The white shoes were naturally associated with a wedding, the pros-
pect of which was not to be relinquished. She revenged herself upon
others, however, in the same manner as in the reaction of striking
people in the back. She " beat them at their own game " once more,
by attempting to pull their feet from under them, imagining the
while that she was playing football. This has another determinant
as we shall see later.
At times she refused to walk at all, forcing the nurses to carry
her. This was the concrete expression of her transference of the
ban upon the use of the sex organs to their symbol, the feet. It was
not, as in cases of hysteria, loss of the power to use the feet, due to a
subconscious suggestion, but a deliberate refusal to use them, because
to use them was wrong. In a division of the personality so com-
plete as that occurring in severe psychoses the formerly subcon-
scious has risen to the surface as the conscious, so that the hysterical
subterfuge is unnecessary.
She professed perfect confidence now in her ability to do any-
thing she liked, while at the same time her feeling of insufficiency
asserted itself in certain compensatory ideas and activities. She en-
tertained the idea, for example, that the taller people were, the
better they were, and she disliked the nurses who were short.
Dwarfs were villains and giants were gods. The international
drama entered again into this stage, as in helping Alsace-Lorraine
(which represents herself) she is " helping a country that hadn't had
a chance." She had never had, as no one ever has, all the oppor-
tunity for self-expression, and for imposing her will on others, that
she desired, that is, " she had never had a chance." In this stage of
her psychosis she was very dictatorial, managing everyone around
her, getting jobs for them and planning their amusements, and mak-
ing numerous elaborately worked out suggestions for the reform of
the hospital regime. In the same manner she worked out new plans
for her father's business, which she was going to take over.
Marriage and Maternity, — Soon after giving away her clothes,
she distributed, in her last three monthly excitements, her old beaux
to the other patients, because she no longer needed these, just as
she no longer wanted the clothes. None of them, not even " Francis,"
could satisfy her now. Her husband to be was an ideal, god-like,
father-like, not yet encountered, but sure to come, and for him she
prepared. The nearest approach to her ideal, an approach so near
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30 LUCILE DOOLEY
that she allowed him to represent the ideal for the time being, though
aware that he was a proxy, was the one male physician that she en-
countered. She made it a working hypothesis, so to speak, that she
was married to him, an hypothesis that it would be most com-
fortable for all concerned to assume, but still not an actual fact. The
real marriage was to be to the god-like father of early infancy, an
image lost to her in the disillusions of growing up. The proxy was
not God — ^though she was much struck by the fact that another
patient considered him thus, but he was the next thing to God ; he
was an angel. Sometimes he came nearer to earth and was only the
president. His voice impressed her as being the most wonderful
she had ever heard, the voice being the symbol of the power vested
in great rulers — such as a father's. His every word carried weight
and had a profound influence upon her thought, as if they were
indeed the oracles of God. Just such weight had her father's words
carried until the adolescent struggle for emancipation began.
A third instance of her mania for giving away things, which
always cropped up in the middle of her infantile stage and always
sprang in part from the common impulse of bestowing on others
the things she had no more use for, was her wrapping various odds
and ends into "surprise packages" and giving or sending them to
her favorite doctors. The unconscious thought, brought to light by
the free-association method, in giving the surprise package, was that
something very precious was concealed in the wrappings, and this
precious thing was the great secret of new life — 2l child. She took
the position that she did not really wish to give birth to children (the
obsessing wish of the preliminary stages of her psychosis) but that
she could easily do so if she did wish it. She bestowed her gifts
graciously but casually, and with an undercurrent of amusement, as
if she would say: "Take the precious thing if you want it. It is
nothing to me." It is exactly the attitude of a child playing at
omnipotence. She is beating her mother at her own game with a
vengeance, and asserting her power over life as a whole. The act
of giving the packages was accompanied by the hilarious amusement
of one perpetrating a huge joke. She recognized the symbolism of
her act and its inadequacy, while yet its fitness as an expression of
her will to subdue life to her uses was a sufficient stimulus to its per-
formance. Jestii^ in dreams comes to mind as expressing the ex-
ultation one feels at getting by the censor with the forbidden thought.
Here she jests with the greatest secret of all and proves to herself
that she is its master. This activity is at a transitional level between
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 3I
the infantile sort of thought and activity and that confused sym-
bolism, that intermingling of the animate and the inanimate, that
identifying of the self with the external world that marks the lowest
Stage of the evolution of the psyche, which we call the archaic
Finding the desires expressed at the infantile level still incapable of
adequate satisfaction, the patient slipped rapidly, each month, into
the third stage, with a less clearly defined interval than that mark-
ing off the adolescent stratum from the infantile.
Archaic Formations
When, in the course of the psychotic attempts at adaptation to
an imfriendly world, the successive failures reduce the personality
to the archaic level of reaction, distinctly differing trends of fixation
of the libido drop out, leaving an almost imdifferentiated, chaotic
mass of auto-erotic wishes and attempts at satisfactions. It is a
stage in which there is confused identification of the psyche not only
with the parents but with the external world. Here the most bizarre
symbolism comes into play, taken from the animal, the plant, and
the inorganic spheres. Here there is no longer, as a rule, any at-
tempt to adapt to the realities of environment, as there always is
in the fantasy-stages of early and later childhood. The patient was
not abstracted from her environment but still fantastic delusions
held complete sway over her consciousness, distorting the objects
about her, to which she was keenly alive. Her attitude toward the
obsessing fantasies was not one of passive surrender, however, as
it so often is in the praecox. The sense of the discord between the
demands of reality, to which her self-respect subscribed, and the
fantasies to which her most primitive and hitherto repressea wisnes
led her, continued to incite a painful conflict, exhibited by either a
hilarious or an angry mood, and by a consciousness of mental suf-
fering that pervaded even the most pleasurable fancies at times.
She contemplated the unrestrained productions of her libidinous
imagination with horror even while she enjoyed them. This horror
and remorse, mingled with fear of their obsessive power, was nec-
essarily an element of her depression in the semi-lucid intervals that
followed the excitements.
The obsession by a story once read of a mummy that came to
life and committed a murder haunted the deepest phase of each ex-
citement, serving as a parable of the auto-erotic libido that right-
fully belonged to a life passed by and done with but which now rose
up to slay her. It is of the same order as the clutching skeleton
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32 LUCILE DOOLEY
hand occurring in the nightmares of many neurotics, which repre-
sents the repressed auto-erotic desire, and the " Alp Traum " treated
by Ernest Jones.^' The mummy is a dead, atrophied thing, horrible
in its suggestion of death in life, and no more striking symbol than
this can be imagined of the resurrection of buried instincts which the
growing psyche has condemned. From her window the patient could
see a tree in which she fancied the mummy hid himself. Jtmg has
shown us the significance of the tree as a mother symbol, and a
ramifying affective complex about trees analyzed very clearly, in
this patient, into regressive wishes toward life within the mother.
In imagination she reconstructed her room to suit her needs and
toward the lower left half of it she always placed a tree, in which
she was to sleep. The juxtaposition of the tree and the mummy is
a striking evidence of the identical character of the primitive mother-
fixation and the narcissistic fixation, as pointed out by Trigant Bur-
row. Sleeping in the tree symbolized a return to the mother-life.
A second well-known mother-symbol, or symbol of the prenatal,
intrauterine life, is, in some connections, water, and water played a
great part in the fancies of the patient. A chimney in her room
focused her fancy. She thrust her feet up it as far as they would
go, remaining in this position for minutes at a time. She sometimes
put her excreta in it. It was to be her avenue of escape, even though
she knew it was too narrow to admit her body. She always expected
water to come down it to relieve her thirst. The water in this case
is a double symbol, as many objects, in this primitive stage of de-
velopment, are double. It is also a male symbol, a symbol of fer-
tility and of the life-giving germ. In support of the masculine sig-
nificance of the symbol is the fact that the patient felt that no one
but the male physician fully understood her great thirst. The things
which she gave him credit for understanding seem to have been in-
variably connected with masculine or father-fixations, while she
trusted in her woman physicians for understanding of her mother
and narcissistic trends. The significance of water as a mother sym-
bol was more widely distributed through her fantasy and activity,
as we might expect from its primal character. She ruminated much
about evolution, thinking that she had come through water; she
went through the motions of swimming while lying in bed; she
greatly enjoyed her hydro-treatment, consciously seeing in the padc
a dramatization of birth, and making a game of wriggling out of her
1' Der Alptraum, Freud's Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 14,
1912.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 33
sheets, when the nurse was not watching, to prove that she could
manage her emergence into the world without the nurse's (mother's)
assistance. She placed wet towels next her body, under her cloth-
ing, " for hydrotherapy " when she could not be in the water. One
of the stories — a prime favorite of her childhood — ^that occupied her
was that of the little mermaid who sacrificed her tail and obtained
feet that she might marry the prince. This story is carrying over
into the later upward strivings toward womanhood, but it holds the
elements of her entire conflict within its meaning. In the seclusion
of her room she acted the part of the mermaid.
At times she imagined herself at the center of the earth, which
again represents the intrauterine life, where the child is indeed in
the center of its world. Or else she had flown to one of the planets,
Uranus usually, which was to be a world only for women. She was
a pioneer, to show other women the way to this hitherto unpeopled
world. She could see herself seated upon the planet like Watts's
painting of Hope. She chose Uranus because it is the planet that is
almost invisible. Neptune is entirely invisible, while the others of
our solar system are visible. In this fantasy she excludes all but
women, that is, all but her mother and herself, and these two are
one. The near-invisibility of Uranus signified obtaining the almost
impossible. Other fancies connected with this regression were that
she was in the Black Hole of Calcutta, that she was in a cave or a
prison. She slept usually, during this period, in the fetal position.
She tore open her bed pad, extracted the rolls of cotton, and crept
inside it, completely enclosing herself within it. At the beginning
of the archaic stage of her excitement, going over from the infantile,
she, on two occasions, sewed pockets into her clothes, turning up
folds to accomplish this. She had set out to mend the seams she
had ripped and could not resist the impulse to make pockets.
In the imagined rearrangement of her room, before mentioned,
there was a place near the tree which she called the " Cat's grave,"
and on which she laid pieces of her father's paper, after tearing
them in four. For the explanation of this we must go back to an
aflfective memory of an incident of her childhood. Someone dropped
a flat iron on her cat, breaking its back. The sight of the injured
animal, and its death, was horrible to her, but held the fascination
that such things do for children. It was, perhaps, the first distinct
contact with pain and death. It became another of those type inci-
dents about which later experiences of like aflfective content were
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34 LUCILE IXX)LEY
associated. Dr. Jelliffe^* has elucidated for us the significance of
animals to the child, and to the adult as well, through their association
with primitive man. For this girl the animal became the symbol of
her own untamed libido, its death, therefore, the symbol of the sac-
rifice which she must make, and its grave an altar. On this altar she
laid a thing which stood for her father — ^his product, the paper
which he edited — ^first tearing it into four pieces to symbolize her
rebirth by union with her father, since four is the number of spir-
ituality. " The Lady or the Tiger " was one of the growing list of
stories read and recurring to memory now as dramatizing her
struggle. Fascinated by the idea, she pictured herself choosing the
beast.
A step higher than the animal symbolisms enters the negro-
complex, foimd in so many psychoses. The backward trend, the
drag back into the mire of unbridled animal desire, was symbolized
by a representative of a lower race. She laughed over the fancy
that the people about her were negroes disguised as white, but
shuddered with the fear that she had negro blood — the lower taint,
and even imagined that her father was really a colored woman. A
patient suffering from a comparatively benign psychosis dreamed, at
a time of great stress, that she was approached, while walking in an
open field, by a negro woman who threatened and then pursued her,
with a switch. The dream took an unaccountable hold upon her
fancy so that she tried to bring it back, waking, in order to finish it.
Analysis showed that the negro woman represented her father, as
the switch, the threat and the pursuit indicate an identification of
father and patient similar to, or identical with, the mother-identifica-
tion. In the same connection men were thought by the patient to
be disguised as women impersonating the nurses. One of these she
called " Elizabeth Electricity," thinking that she had both male and
female characters.
A poetic fancy and one original with this patient, so far as I
know, was that of " Burbanking " to produce a blue rose, by grafting
a rose upon an oak. The oak represents the parent, the rose herself,
while the blue rose is the bisexual superself she would like to be.
This brings us to the elaborate color symbolism worked out by the
patient, an entirely spontaneous production which motivates many
of her most disordered actions, and of which she gave a spon-
taneous interpretation toward the close of the analysis. Colors
i»Jelliffe, S. E., and Brink, Louise: The Role of Animals in the Un-
conscious, Psychoanalytic Review, 1917.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 35
were real and vital to her scheme of life, and while they were
applied in many ways to typify her sexual struggle, perhaps it
will suffice to give their working out in connection with the colored
blankets, which, it will be remembered, she tore into strips and wove
into garments. Gray blankets with blue stripes in them were fem-
inine and bad. The blue could never be made right so long as it
remained alone, so the blue stripes must be torn out and mingled
with other colors. She said, at first, that she was afraid of these
blankets, then corrected herself with the statement that she was not
afraid but felt that she was very brave indeed not to be afraid of
them. The brown and red blankets were masculine, and the red
stripe must be torn out and bound around her head to complete her
costume. It was the crown of her womanhood. This, altogether,
was the Guinevere and Lancelot costume. The blue was Guinevere
and the red Lancelot.
The blanket symbols also had a determinant from the masturba-
tion complex, through her conviction that they were alive. When
she was in a violent state the nurses sometimes threw the blankets
into her room. To her disordered fancy, they jumped at her
like tarantulas; tarantulas, spiders and scorpions all played a part
in her dreams as masturbation symbols. The four colors were
woven together to neutralize the evil blue which never could
be right alone. She was not satisfied unless she had a blanket of
each color, always putting the blue striped one next to her body,
as the female-mother-blanket must necessarily be nearest her, but
feeling very incompletely and even indecently covered if she did not
have the red striped one also. She felt that it was inconceivably
cruel of the attendant to give her only the blue striped blanket,
forcing her to the crime of consorting only with her own sex. She
sat up all night, industriously tearing up the blankets, though ready
to drop with weariness and groaning over the severe task. This was
after they had been worn one above the other as described. A closer
union became necessary and so she intermingled them by weaving.
She thinks now that the rags were always taken away from her
before she had fully completed the costume she was trying to make.
Gray, itself, freed of the blue, was a neutral color, imagined to be
flesh color, hence, herself, produced of the union of male and female.
Draped in the gray she was invisible, as she was also when dressed
in black and white, which are negations of color. She made a ring
of the gray and put it on the third finger of her right hand. This
was an invisible wedding ring of flesh color and symbolized her
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36 LUCILE IXX)LEY
union with both parents. It may be recalled that at the onset of her
psychosis, she stole her mother's wedding ring. Best of all she
loved the soft white blankets sometimes given her when she was
growing quiet. These were innocent baby blankets, pure of sexual
significance, representing the time of her own life when she knew
not good and evil. She never tore these. The main individual
source of her unpleasant association with blue was the fact that it
was her sister's color. Her sister had blue eyes, while hers were
hazel. Her sister wore blue, and was popular, hence both condemned
and envied. Her sister had been the chief object of her childish af-
fections and was afterward hated.
This complex of color, making blue the a-social, homosexual
symbol, supports the researches of Smith Ely Jelliffe along this line,
and shows also, by its various connections, how intimate is the rela-
tion between homosexuality, auto-eroticism and the love of the
mother's body, in girls as well as in boys. For the color complex,
working through other objects, was nevertheless nowhere so com-
pletely worked and understood by the patient, nowhere so efficient
as an impulse to action of an arduous nature, as it was when pre-
sented to her in the blankets, which, by their function and fabric,
t)rpified the protection and warmth accorded to infancy by the
mother. And we need not forget the little gray shawl — ^torn now
from a blanket — ^the gift of a grandfather.
A waking dream of the patient which involves her identification
of herself with her mother was that she was acting the part of Joan
of Arc. The selection of this personage is determined in many
ways, both superficial and fundamental. Joan is a combination of
her own and her sister's names. She would have liked " Jo " to be
a brother instead of a sister. Anne, her own name, was the name
of the mother of "Mary," who is the great mother of all. This
means that she becomes the mother of her mother, like MacCurd/s
patient. By the identification process she then becomes the Virgin
Mother, the Savior of the Race, the Mother of the World, the
Mother of France, which, we must remember, was her ideal coun-
try, typifying the goal of her womanhood. Madame De Farge, the
fury in Dickens's story of the French Revolution, "A Tale of Two
Cities," was identified with a patient near her, as the wicked mother,
representing the other side of the complex, just as the condemna-
tion of the blue striped blankets represented it.
The symbolism of numbers, fascinating to psychoanalysts, re-
ceives also a striking contribution from this patient. It may be
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 37
remembered that she was much interested in mathematics, including
mathematical terms in her stream of talk, and once informing her
doctor that she was "psychoanalyzing religion by mathematics."
As it is not possible here to go into the many branches of this sub-
ject, I shall occupy myself only with the core of it, which is the sig-
nificance of the number six. A superficial determinant of this num-
ber is that it was the real number of her family, including the two
dead infants, whereas the ostensible number 4, which she con-
demned as uninteresting, included only the surviving members. She
desired to have six children. The first explanation of her preference
for six as the perfect number was that it was the combination, both
by adding and multiplying, of the first three prime numbers, i, 2 and
3, and herein lies the key to its meaning. A pessimist, she said,
would say that three was the perfect number. Three is the mascu-
line number, representing the male genitalia, two the feminine,
representing the female genitalia, and these two, combined in
one, unite, bringing in also the symbol of their union — one —
to form the perfect six. Again, from another angle, one is the mas-
culine, coming first, and two the feminine, coming second. The
patient expressed the wish to be second in a series of six, declaring
that she would not be either first or third. An additional meaning
given to this arrangement of numbers was that it stood for the
family. Second place was the wife's place, while succeeding places
were children. She wished to be the wife and mother.
Apropos, again, of her mother conflict, she fancied that she was
a Lorelei and a submarine in one, that was to sink German ships,
Germany being her mother's country. Her action in grabbing the
feet of the nurses and trying to throw them down was partly insti-
gated by this fancy. She planned to invent a combination submarine-
aeroplane-cinematograph, which would carry out all her desires for
self-expansion and sexual activity.
At no point in the delusional framework of a deep psychosis do
we get a richer production of primitive ideas and mjrthology than in
the acts and ideas dealing with the symbolization of impregnation.
Commonest among these are the ideas dealing with food and eating,
as Frazer's " Golden Bough " will readily bring to mind. Our patient
had many such fancies, although of course she had long since con-
sciously given up the alimentary theory held in childhood. Having
no other clear idea, and having descended to the uncritical, symbol-
ical, picturizing level of thinking, she reverted to this theory as a
basis for her fantasies of impregnation. Eggs were eaten with the
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38 LUCILE IXX)LEY
idea that she would have thereby a child. Glass, mercury and a
needle were swallowed, with the expressed intention of committing
suicide, but with an unconscious idea that they would have the same
eflfect. She imagined, afterward, that the mercury came out at her
eye, the eye being associated, substitutively, with the genital organs.
She had great fear that her eyes would be injured, talked of how
this was the only fatal injury, as broken limbs could be mended, and
thought sometimes that this was an hospital for the blind. It may
be recalled that a few months before the onset of the psychosis,
she complained of eye strain and gave up all work for which close
eye sight was required. Here we have the castration complex with
the added primitive idea that that which the ego cannot or will
not see does not exist.
Among food symbols, there were particular kinds of foods for
which she expressed a constant preference and which were ex-
plained by her in the coiu-se of analysis. Brick ice cream, with
chocolate, vanilla nut, and lemon ice layers was a favorite. It repre-
sented, first, something done that couldn't be undone. This was her
own wrong sexual development. The chocolate meant negro blood ;
i. e,, the father-mother-self complex, as explained. The vanilla,
stuck full of nuts, was impregnation. This was the middle layer.
The top layer was lemon ice, which was pure heavcQ, associated
with the Alps, rarified air, the perfect happiness following union.
Pies of various varieties were indulged in, with a somewhat similar
analysis of preference. The dark mince, like the chocolate, was
negro blood. She was sure it was poisoned but ate it none the less.
In her attempts at decorative dressing, she invariably placed a
flower over her left ear. The idea of impregnation by the ear has
played its part in religious mjrth and is analyzed also in Jones's
" Hamlet." That it should be the left side is significant, for the left
is recognized by the patient as representing the wrong road. She
sometimes held her left hand with her right for minutes at a time,
as an intended means of keeping from wrongdoing. The flower
was usually a carnation, if she could get it. Its strong odor and its
shape, as well as its long life, gave it a peculiarly sexual significance.
Impregnation by the ear involves also her recognition of power in
voices, or auditory impressions.
It may be remembered that in the first development of her out-
spoken psychosis, she imagined her operation— dilatation and curet-
tage — ^to have been an assault, picturing the instrument as a cross.
Its purpose was conceived to be to cure her of masturbation, hence
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 39
the assault was in the nature of martyrdom, since it meant a supreme
sacrifice of her self-indulgent habits. This fancy recurred in the
later attacks. The window-frame threw a cruciform shadow on the
floor of her room. On this cross she lay, as a martyr, playing a
combination role of Joan of Arc and Christ. She was saving the
race — ^by expansion, herself — by sacrificing herself. The cross as
a phallic s3mibol is too well established to need discussion here.
Machines of various sorts were dreaded, more than human beings
— as having power to influence or hurt her. These too are well
known masculine sex-sytnbols. Her greatest fear, she confided at
one time, was of being run over by an engine.
These fantasy-formations, related in the course of analysis, dur-
ing which the patient was convalescing, were accompanied by a great
d^ of activity, only fully intelligible in the light of the underlying
fantasies. The movements of the patient were all of them attempts
at acting out the fancies that possessed her, in the same free and
unrepressed way that children act out their fairy-tales. She seldom
sank into a passive state, was, on the contrary, in a press of activity,
though when visitors entered she might stand or sit silent and go
through motions suggestive of a sign language. The dramatized
fantasies gave vent to the deep-lying, repressed wishes and wish-
conflicts of the patient, in 'the realm of her psycho-sexual life. Her
desire for complete heterosexuality, her struggle with homosexuality,
her incestuous trend toward her father, her infantile identification
with her mother, her auto-erotic network of wishes and denial of
wishes, are expressed in varying forms, and all are woven together.
To find satisfaction for her soul hunger, to find a scope of activity
where she need not feel inferior or pressed upon or circumscribed,
to find a medium of contact with life by which she may keep her
supremacy, these are the basis and the inspiration of the fantastic
thoughts and activities of the succeeding phases of the psychosis.
The connection of these with the menstrual period suggests that there
was a sharpening of the conflict with the exacerbation of sexual
feelings upon the approach of menstruation. The temptation to
masturbation was always greatest just preceding the menstrual
period. The case is unusually well defined as exemplifying the
psycho-sexual monthly cycle. Failure to find adequate satisfaction
for the desires which increased in intensity seems a very possible
reason for the gradual drop to a distinctly lower level of mental in-
t^ration. This drop was seen not only in the loss of correct adap-
taticm to surroundings, as shown by behavior, but also in the char-
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40 LUCILE IXX)LEY
acter of the fancies in possession of the mind, as I have tried to
show in my divsion of the subject. When, with establishment of
menstruation, relief for the sexual tension was partially obtained,
the intense effort to find expression and attainment ceased, and the
patient subsided into an irritable, somewhat querulous mood, like
that of a disappointed child. This gave way to humility, ideas of
unworthiness, and penitence, characteristic of depressive states, as
she came back into touch with reality. As these states were steps
toward recovery, it is not surprising that her recovery finally was
built up out of a prolonged depression which had no slightest re-
currence of the more serious manic phase.
After analysis, and accompanying analysis, came the difficult
work of reconstruction of the personality, with the object of sub-
stituting wholesome thought-habits and adequate adaptations for
the old faulty habits and arrested upward trends. Analysis of the
patient's dreams here played a great part, not only in bringing up
the half -understood material in the psychotic productions, but also
in pointing out the course which the reconstruction was to take and
marking the milestones of progress. The dream is not merely the
expression of a repressed wish, it is also the statement of a prob-
lem, and often the forecast of a solution. Dream analysis was taken
up in the depressed intervals between the manic attacks, with marked
results, which showed most clearly when the depressed phase again
returned. The complexes resolved were, in order, the sister-com-
plex, the father-complex, the mother-complex, and the Narcissus-
complex. This temporal order corresponds exactly to the order of
development, taking the latest first, and going down to the earliest,
most fundamental. The sister-complex was solved by making
conscious the feeling of jealousy, followed, at first, by considerable
compensatory sentiment about the sister but ending in a just appre-
ciation of her, with the resolve to cease competition and to win
equality along lines of activity different from her sister's. She def-
initely conceded to her sister her rightful superiority along certain
lines, but held her own in others. A necessary but transient phase
of the solving of this conflict was the exalting of her sister to a
mother's place. She drew a picture of one of the six windows in
her cathedral, showing her sister as the consoling mother, with the
patient resting her head upon the sister's lap, while on either side,
on a lower level, were represented father and mother, the father
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 4I
typifying selfishness and greed, the mother, indolence and ignorance.
Under the patient's form was written "Crazy? Yes — and Why?"
The parents were the answer to this, with their selfishness, ignorance
and indolence. The cathedral was her ideal home, the six windows
meant her number of complete happiness, and her sister, the ideal
woman, which she could not reach. An analysis of this, taken with
a dream of similar import, brought a sane adjustment of her atti-
tude toward her sister, with a change also in the homosexual char-
acter of her dreams.
Bearing on the father-complex came dreams of the kaiser-type,
one involving cannibalism and one of a savage island, peopled by a
bestial race, into the royal family of which she was to be forced to
marry. The analyses of these, and of her waking fantasies, re-
vealed to her fully the true nature of her attitude toward her father,
spontaneously resolving the sexual conflict connected with it, and
leaving her with a greater degree of emancipation from her father's
influence, and the normal attitude of a grown-up daughter.
Dreams of a homosexual character, and of re-birth followed*
With the analyses of these, adjustment to the mother was accom-
plished. Then came the long and difficult task of unwrapping the
libido from its windings about the self. The tactful introduction of
new interests, the stimulation of ambition through talks on her plans
for the future, through reading of biographies, and through reestab-
lishment of communication with home and friends were called to
the aid of analysis here. The struggle was severe, the difficulty of
giving up the lifelong pleasurable preoccupation with herself being
equalled by the shame of her realization, which led her to feel that
she could never be worth while and that death was still her only
solution. An obsession that her death would fittingly come by hang-
ing gives an indication of the persistent infantile subjectivity, since
hanging symbolizes a perversion of the return to intrauterine life
and also the auto-erotic trend. In the analyses of these trends, an
eflFort was made to bring before the patient adequate conceptions
of the best sexual life of a woman and to present a constructive and
altruistic philosophy of life. Her sense of responsibility as a yoimg
woman to the race developed with her growing hope of recovery as
the freeing of the libido from the lower object advanced.
A dream of particular interest dramatized the final stages of this
phase of reconstruction, utilizing fantasy material of her whole
psychosis and expressing her conclusion as to the place of her sex-
instinct. She dreamed that she was brushing her hair (hair being
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42 LUCILE DOOLEY
one of her chief secondary fixation points) and that a long piece
came down. Some one exclaimed ''Oh, it is a snake head." She
looked, saw that it was a snake, pulled it off, and threw it down,
without any emotion. As it lay upon the floor it became a very small
creature, neither animal nor man, but rather a sort of black man-
nequin. This creature began to moan and cry and then to sing in a
plaintive way about the oppression of its race, the refrain being
"When shall I be free?" She thought how surprising it was that
such beautiful poetry and music should be produced by that ugly
little animal. The little animal represents her libido with its con-
flict, starting with the sexual symbols of her hair and the snake.
After this dream the reconstruction went on rapidly, as the sexual
problem was really solved, and about all that remained to do was
the overcoming of external factors that hindered the establishment
of complete rapport with a normal environment. This has been
done and the patient has been quite well for four months.
VI
Here we have a psychosis which analysis shows to have been a
series of constructive efforts at asserting the worth of the per-
sonality and overcoming, or else avoiding, the obstacles in the way
of a satisfactory self-expression and the establishment of useful
and necessary connections with society. Failure to find avenues of
expression consistent with the demands of society and satisfying
to the demands of the ego, inability to make the progressive adapta-
tions required of the adolescent, through too firm a fixation on the
earlier objects of affective interest, a tendency to over-anxiousness
for perfection of conduct and disproportionate shame at blunders
which greatly decreased the ability to meet new situations, working
cumulatively through years, brought the individual at last to the
point where desperate efforts to live with her environment were less
and less consistent with the demands of the realities of the situation.
At last they passed the bounds of the normal; that is, they served
no recognized useful purpose, although they expressed the trends
of the personality as truly as normal activity expresses it.
Beginning with a defective heredity, a probable weakness of the
female organs, liability to infections of various sorts, and, as seems
likely in view of the patient's inability to master some finer co-
ordinations in spite of good muscular development, a defect in motor
control, we have the basis for the development of an inferior per-
sonality. These defects were well-compensated by a bright mind
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 43
and a lively and attractive character, which carried the patient pretty
successfully through childhood. Isolation, adult companionship,
spoiling and petting, however, fostered a strong egoism, while
faulty hygiene developed auto-erotic tendencies. Serious difficulties
occurred at adolescence, partly from physical causes, but largely
from ignorance of sexual things. The sense of inferiority became
a mastering obsession, sharpened to a distressing degree by the con-
stant rivalry of her more fortunate sister. Timidity resulting from
this mental attitude made easy social adaptation impossible, while
the centering of affections upon the home circle, and particularly
upon the father, further jeopardized the wider social relations nec-
essary to full development. The first indication of a breakdown —
the gastric disturbance — occurred after the humiliation of reading
the derogatory remarks in her sister's diary. This rebuff boimd her
sexual interest more firmly to the childhood objects. The second
breakdown, of a neurasthenic character, when she gave up her
studies because no longer equal to them, followed her love affair
with a younger boy and her infection with s)rphilis. The third, of
a depressive nature, really continuous with the second, but more out-
spoken, followed events that brought her failure home to her anew.
Delusions developed with the operation that stirred up the severe
sexual conflict involving father-fixation, fear of marriage and mas-
turbation. A disappointment in which she was made to feel her
childish helplessness in the hands of others preceded the definite
manic attack. These events are milestones in the life history that
led to a breakdown of a poorly integrated personality.
Time after time her normal affective reactions were suppressed
by conditions of the family life, and an abnormal, partial, or in-
fantile type of reaction substituted for the normal. The funda-
mental difficulty was in sexual development. When the patient per-
ceived this, as she did, without understanding the cause, she found
the problem thus created in view of the tabu of society so distress-
ing that the situation was intolerable. A two-fold retreat became
necessary; first, a retreat from the real into the fantastic world;
and, second, a compensating activity in fields where there was hope
of succeeding. It is this activity, this persistent endeavor to meet
and control the environment, albeit under conditions dictated by the
patient, that imparts to her psychotic conduct its distinctly manic
character as opposed to the praecox. She did not give up her con-
nection with her real environment, but reacted to it in a manner re-
productive of the adaptive forms of her immaturity, which did not
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44 LUCILE DOOLEY
accord with the demands made by society upon the adult. This
sort of retreat showed regular stages in a striking manner, the mean-
ing of which cannot escape us. With each flight into active efforts
at control of her external surroundings came a relief of the tension
which she experienced in her endeavor to reach up to a situation to
which she had not grown, with a consequent intense euphoria. The
basal conflicts, concerning marriage, father, masturbation, fought to
gain satisfactory solution in these activities. They attained a partial
consciousness, could not be reconciled with the highest social trends
of the personality, created a new tension, which was relieved by a
further descent to a level of cultural development where the de-
mands were less complex, where the individual was less subservient
to social laws (as in childhood), and so on until the lowest level
consistent with conscious life was reached. The patient never re-
lapsed into inactivity for any length of time.
The psychomotor activity, schemes, inventions, etc., were a de-
fense against her sense of failure, keeping her mind filled with a
gratifying sense of achievement. They were also a compensation
for the humiliating feeling that she was a passive instrument, a feel-
ing due more to her homosexual trend — ^never fully matured — and
its concomitant father-fixation, than to the actual circumstances of
her life. In her excited periods she showed eager attempts at het-
erosexual relations, writing letters to all her former male friends,
declaring her love to one or two, and planning her marriage. De-
fense and compensation thus appear to be the motives for the psy-
chotic behavior in general, while the nature of her several activities
is very clearly seen to relate to her fimdamental complexes arising
from those conflicts of feeling which made normal adjustment to
the progressively greater demands of mental growth an impossibility.
As each of these arose anew as a stumbling block in her path of
self-assertion, the point in her life where the painful conflict was
initiated was reverted to and lived over.
The determination of the form which the psychosis — or malad-
justment to environment — assumed seems to resolve into a question
of personality.*^ In this case there is a childhood history cor-
responding very closely to the type of histories found for the praecox
group and also for the psychoneuroses. That is, there is a failure
in psychosexual development, fostered by environmental conditions
inimical to free social development. The personality, however, is
not of the praecox type. The patient is an emotional, sensitive,
1^ Jelliffe and White, Diseases of the Nervous System, p. 749.
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MANIC-DEPRESSIVE PSYCHOSIS 45
energetic girl, responsive to her environment and particularly re-
sponsive to persons. She was never seclusive, although her social
relations were seldom — or for long — ^satisfactory to herself. She
reacts to the rebuffs of fate by an energetic effort at achievement of
some sort, though her efforts are not wisely directed. She halts
for a time on the verge of true introversion but avoids it by a flight
into a stream of activity at a level where obstacles are not, for the
time being, insurmountable. Gradually the plane of action falls to
the archaic level so characteristic of the praecox, but it does not
remain there. Continuous effort at assertion of her individual
worth brings about at first partial, and finally, with the aid of
analysis, which brought the whole conflict and its causes to con-
sciousness, complete rehabilitation.
The conclusion suggested is that cases of the manic-depressive
type of reaction may have the same complex of causes, the core of
which is failure at successive points of psychosexual development,
that is found to underly the praecox group and the hysterias. That
a serious functional mental disorder must have such a background
of failure to react in useful ways, that it is the result of a series of
vicious conditioned reflexes, is a theory finding support in most of
the psychoanalytic work of recent years. The fact that the manic-
depressive patient has been able, in his normal periods, to exercise
a greater amoimt of repression over the destructive conflicts and to
keep his touch with reality, has in most cases veiled the true history
of his development. Given the fundamental conflicts, the atypical
archaic manifestations are possible, as MacCurdy has shown. A
close analysis of the actions of other manics might show the pres-
ence of archaic notions, where they are less on the surface than in
this patient.
That every functional psychosis is a regression to a less well
organized and complex stage of development — ^namely, to a some-
what infantile stage, where the repressions of conventional life are
partly laid aside — ^while it is at the same time a constructive effort at
achievement of the ends of the ego, an effort at self-expression of
an adequate sort, is our most useful conception of functional men-
tal disease. The case here under discussion makes possible the ap-
plication of this conception in detail to the manic-depressive type.
The conclusion follows that a life history of a certain sort and de-
lusions of a certain sort do not determine the case as benign or
deteriorating ; rather, it is the capacity on the part of the individual
to maintain an active effort toward domination of a hindering en-
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46 LUCILE DOOLEY
vironment while keeping in consciousness and relating to these
activities the general nature of the difficulty. Such a capacity in the
individual does not permit of the mental sagging down perceived in
the true introversion type, and tends to bring about, by successive
efforts, a Rnal successful adjustment. This may occur sponta-
neously, with the certainty that new diffictdties will bring new dead-
locks, with the flight into defensive abnormal activity. If it occurs
with the insight lent by a thorough analysis there is a chance that
the old vicious habits of adaptation may be broken up and adequate
methods of meeting problems established. The manic-depressive
psychosis, then, as we know it, may develop out of the same sort of
general psychic situation as the praecox, and the underlying fantasy
controlling its activities may be of as primitive a nature as those
underlying the profounder disturbance of the praecox. The dif-
ference, as well as we can ascertain it, lies in the attainment by the
individual of a more robust character, making for a type of reaction
less vicious in its effects, and less incongruous with the world of
reality, than that of the so-called deteriorating psychosis.
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REACTION TO PERSONAL NAMES*
By C. p. Oberndorf, M.D. •
INSTRUCTOR IN OJKICAL NEUBOLOGY, CORNELL MEDICAL SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY
It has been pointed out by Abraham* that the name a person
bears is often a determining factor in influencing definite psychic
reactions, such as scorn, pride or shame, upon the person himself.
Such a tendency is exemplified by the remark of one of my youthful
patients, in a profound depression, " My name is Chrystal and I
should be pure " — a comment which, by the way, revealed the gist
of his depression.
In the course of other analyses of patients complaining of various
neurotic symptoms, there has been a striking frequency with which
patients have referred to their attitude toward their Christian names
or in some way altered their surnames. Where the reaction has
had any intense force, the vital influence has depended not so much
upon the force of the name on the person, as Abraham states, but
upon innate feelings which the patient believes is in some way
mirrored in his name, to or against his advantage.
Silberer has aptly compared the name of a person to his shadow.
Although it accompanies him throughout Ufe and is inseparable
from him, when impassively examined, there is nothing in the name
which is an integral part of himself. At times it is possible by travel-
ling under an incognito for the person to escape from his name.
The assumed name temporarily conceals him as night does a shadow.
But a person can never quite escape from his real name and the in-
cognito becomes comparable to the shadow, which inevitably disap-
pears in the light of the morning sun.
Unquestionably many names (such as Theodore and Woodrow
in America or Victoria in England) are bestowed upon children
with the more or less conscious hope that the person may, in the
future, emulate or surpass the qualities attributed by the donor
to the child's namesake. The name represents an omen that coming
events may cast their shadows before. Thus the bearer of the name
from association b^ns to identify himself with his namesake and
1 Manuscript received March i8, 1917. — [Ed.]
* Abraham, Zentralblatt fur Psycho-analyse, Vol. II, p. 133.
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48 C. p. OBERNDORF
assumes to a greater or less extent the qualities with which the name
is invested.
Many of the fanciful girls' names undoubtedly reflect the long-
ing of a mother to identify the future of her offspring with the
romantic qualities of some heroine of fiction — qualities and experi-
ences perhaps desired by the mother herself but entirely lacking in
her prosaic existence. Often such names form an amusingly in-
congruous combination with a surname which we have come to
identify with the commonplace.
It is striking, here in America, how with the change of conven-
tional ideals, the type of given names has varied from generation
to generation. The Biblical names of Puritan days appear to have
yielded to more euphonious ones of aristocratic British or French
origin and these in turn have more recently given way to the simpler,
" strong," short names.
One of my youthful patients expressed a violent repugnance
for his rather fastidious name, Leroy, which was yoked to a common
name of German origin, let us say, Meyer. Leroy considered his
name so effeminate (" sissified ") that he blushed whenever he men-
tioned it. Probably to most persons Leroy carries no such conno-
tation. Leroy, however, had himself remained a "spoilt baby,"
for all his nineteen years, and I interpreted his antipathy to the
weakness which he considered connected with his name to be a
protest against a quality which he felt to be very strong in himself
and revealed by his name.
In the matter of the surname the bearer is more likely to identify
it with characteristics attributed to his ancestors. When an in-
dividual attaches a feeling of disdain or shame to such a name, he
usually bases it upon a sense of inferiority existing more or less
consciously in himself. Thus, an Italian patient, a professional
man, ashamed of the general social position of his countrymen in
America, altered his Dippucd to de Pucci, to lend it a French
(aristocratic) air; a Jewish patient abbreviated his Linkenstein to
Link; a third. Christian, American bom, upon reaching maturity,
abandoned his noble German name of von Landsschaffshausen for
a typically English name, the maiden name of his mother.*
'It has repeatedly occurred to me that the generally favorable attitude
of Americans towards the Allies in the present European conflict is in
some measure influenced by an unnconsdous desire on their part to identify
themselves with the gentility and chivalry of the French and the aristocratic
reserve of the English rather than with the vulgarity, awkwardness and
grossness which is so universally associated with the Germans. That there
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REACTION TO PERSONAL NAMES 49
A curious contrast in his attitude to his given and his surname
is furnished by a Greek patient, who was analyzed because of a
compulsive idea. Although he had been christened with the sonorous
name of Aristarchos (Panthos), he now responds to the non-com-
mittal name of Harry, which was bestowed upon him by his first
American employer, who found Aristarchos far too cumbersome
for daily use. While the patient heartily dislikes Harry and also
his Greek surname, he is particularly partial to Aristarchos, which
he wishes it were feasible for him to resume, notwithstanding its
conspicuously foreign sound.
The reaction to each name is here again determined by the per-
sonal longings of the bearer and evidently not vice versa. His dis-
like to his surname may be superficially assigned, in part to its
Grecian soimd, which identifies him with what he considers an in-
ferior race (all Greeks in America are peddlers, boot blacks, etc.),
and in part to his violent antipathy to his father, a man some thirty-
five years older than the patient's mother.
On the other hand, his pride in Aristarchos, which is certainly
even more distinctly Greek than Panthos, seems inexplicable if his
aversion to Greek identification be accepted. If we revert for a
moment to elementary Gredc, we find that Aristarchos signifies the
"best leader" (aristos=the best; archos=the ruler) or perhaps
more colloquially, the chief or boss.
The patient's pride in his Christian name began early — ^probably
when his rivalry and hatred of his father, now undisguised, was still
in its most rudimentary stages. He recalls the flush of pride which
he experienced even as a little boy, when in calling him to return
home from his play, his father would sing out, " Oh, Aristarchos."
Possibly his thrill came from being called the "chief " by his father
(his master) but in addition the patient has always been a strong
exhibitionist, with tendencies to usurp the most prominent role when-
ever opportunity offers. In other words his name indicates what it
is his deepest wish to really be, namely the chief, and this tendency
is so strong that it overwhelms his aversions to its objectionable
foreign sound, which partially accounted for his dislike to his
father's name of Panthos. This is all the more remarkable in view
of the fact that the significance of leadership embodied in Arisar-
chos must remain a fact of almost exclusively personal knowledge,
is a certain conscious tendency in this direction is evidenced in innumerable
ways: certain fashionable shops pay larger salaries to salespeople speaking
with an "English" accent Wanamaker advertises his dressmaking estab-
lishment " au quatrieme," etc.
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50 ^ — €?rP: OBERNDORF
whereas Aristarchos itself, here in America, in the class among
whom he associates (derks), certainly would be open to ridicule.
The patient's fondness for Aristarchos in antithesis to his dislike
for Panthos is a reflection of the typical father rival complex. As
the patient's love for his youthful mother (35 years younger than
his father) has assumed a frank conscious sexual aspect, it is quite
natural that he should hate the man who possesses her and the name
which he (and she) bears (Panthos). Aristarchos, on the other
hand, designates him in his father's role, the chief (the head of
the house), thus satisfying his desire to overcome his father, even
though this be so shallow a substitute as in name only.
Reactions of this kind are individual, dependent upon attempts
on the part of the patient to counteract, in a feeble way, inherent
feelings of weakness. Very unusual names like Paderewski or
perfectly humble ones, like Andrew Jackson, create no pronounced
comment on the part of the public because of the high achievements
attained by their bearers, though if the former name belonged to a
dothing peddler and the latter to a negro barber, they might form
the basis for a considerable reaction on the part of either the in-
dividual or the public.
The instances just dted all represent fairly obvious interpretations
of reactions. In the analysis of the following case, where the re-
pugnance reverts to infantile echolalia which represents one of the
earliest forms of rhythmic muscle and mucous membrane erotism,
there is unfolded a far more elemental basis than in the examples
above or those reported by Abraham or Stekel.
Robert " Braun," a patient under analysis for a psycho-neurosis,
could " never stand " his Christian name. It appears that the origin
of his antagonism may be traced to the period when he acquired
the first rudiments of sound expression. Under the tutdage of
his aunt, who was intrusted with his care in babyhood, among the
first things he was taught to babble was naturally enough his own
name, Bob-bee (Bobbie).
In this connection it must be emphasized that Robert was the
first bom and for seven years the only child in the family, that is,
the baby, and hence most important member of the little household.*
So, in common with most other babies, one of the other sounds
early acquired was bay-bee (baby). Inasmuch as Bob-bee and
bay-bee were one and the same, it may be inferred he would repeat
in the automatic, childish way, without distinction of meaning, in
an alternating series : Bob-bee, bay-bee ; Bob-bee, bay-bee.
* The analysis of many symptoms of this case was published in the New
York Medical Journal, July 22, 1916.
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REACTION TO PERSONAL NAMES 5I
Before long another appellation as a designation for Robert crept
into the family parlance, namely a combination of the initial letters
of his first and last names — B.B. (instead of Bobbie Braun.) Thus
presently the echolalia incorporated these three pet names, now
assuming the serial form: Bob-bee, bay-bee, bee-bee (B.B., i. e.,
Bobbie Braun.)
As is so often the case in German families here in America where
much of the tradition of German customs pervades the family life,
the environment of Robert's home and nursery conformed to German
ideals in language and spirit. Hence it is quite natural that among
the terms in his early language acquisition should have been another
phonetically similar and f requenlty used dissyllabic nursery expres-
sion, namely, bo-bo, a South German corruption for po-po, which
is a common German term for the posterior parts or buttocks.
Accordingly, with this amplification of his echolalia, the sounds
produced by the little boy, then about four years old, assumed this
form: Bob-bee (Bobbie), Bay-bee (Baby), Bee-bee (B.B.), Bo-bo
(Behind).
A further determinant also has its source in euphemisms of. the
nursery. While urination was designated by the commonly em-
ployed sotmd combination of pee-pee, defecation was indicated by
the syllables bay-bay. Bay-bay is the sound of the second letter
of the German alphabet reduplicated, in other words nothmg less
than B.B. in German. Thus B.B. in German has for this boy a
decidedly unsavory connotation.
Robert, as an only and carefully guarded child, was alone a
great part of the time. Naturally he found much opportimity to
babble to himself in playing his games and to indulge in the pastime
of repeating rhythmic sounds with that satisfaction which echolalia
in itself unquestionably yields to young children. We may think of
him, a solitary little figure, swinging to and fro in a rocking chair,
repeating over and over to himself, the formula in its final shape.
Such actually is the picture which the patient draws of himself, for
he has a disinct recollection of having spent hours by himself, even
up to the age of eight, repeating over and over the echolalic rhythmic
scale, which, though occasionally varied in order of the sounds, ran
thus : Bob-bee, Bay-bee or Bee-bee, Bay-bay, Bo-bo.
The close affiliation of bay-bay and bo-bo, both phonetically and
functionally, naturally soon became apparent to the child — ^bay-bay
came from bo-bo. It was not a far step to identify through sound
association, bob-bee (Bobbie) with bo-bo, and also bay-bee (Baby,
i. e., Robert) with bay-bay. When we recall that B.B. (German
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52 C. p. OBERNDORF .
bay-bay) was another of his names, it is comprehensible how with
these auxiliary sound associations, his name became invested with
all the disagreeable attributes of bay-bay and bo-bo.
While it is impossible here to recount the numerous details, it
may be stated that Robert's anal-erotic (Bo-bo) activities, which
included elaborate ceremonials of the rhythimc type and compulsive
acts in connection with defecation, comprised the strongest element
in his adolescent sexual life. In later years he unsuccessfully
attempted to alter and suppress his sexual activities in the toilet
(still in connection with bo-bo and bay-bay). His failure found a
compensatory substitution expressed openly in his aversion to his
name, connoting to him the activities associated with bobo and
bay-bay. To restate my contention, it was far more desirable for
Robert to express distaste for his name than to overcome the habits
which his name connoted — far more feasible from a social point of
view, to be ashamed of his name than his habits.
Pronounced aversions of this kind are almost never singly deter-
mined and in this instance we find an important secondary influence.
When Robert was only five years old, his aunt, who acted as his
mentor, detected a certain underhandedness in his actions, such as
stealth in taking things, a tendency to conceal or deny the truth,
etc. She often reproached him with this. Subsequently on his
repetition of little sneaky acts, she would tauntii^ly refer to him
as Bobbitzky, which term implied that he was not straightforward
("itzky " is a common termination of Polish Jewish names and this
expression undoubtedly originated with the aunt in the prevalent
idea among Germans that Polish Jews are especially untrustworthy).
Realizing the implications of the suffix, Robert resented the odious
Bobbitzky and it may be assumed, Bobby, from which it was derived.
Robert's sexual life (bo-bo activities) until manhood consisted
of constant clandestine indulgences while to his family he main-
tained the semblance of chastity. In other words he persisted in
being Bobbitzky (stealthy) with his bo-bo. Thus, I believe he
came to hate Robert as reminiscent of both stealthiness and sexual
practices, very vital problems, which he was arduously seeking to
conquer.
It furthermore seems quite likely that these associations have
been the unconscious determining factors in the patient's invariable
habit of using only his first initial, R., in his signature (R. Braun)
instead of writing his full name as is customary with persons having
no middle name.
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TRANSLATION
A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD
By Dr. H. von Hug-Hellmuth
Translated from the German by
James J. Putnam, M.D.
HARVASD MEDICAL SCHOOL
AND
Mabel Stevens, B.S.
WELLESLEY
PART I. THE PERIOD OF INFANCY (THE SUCKLING)
I. The Functions of the Senses in the Service of the
Affective Life of the Infant
The mental life of the infant begins with the reaction to sensa-
tions induced by stimulations from without, as well as by those com-
ing from within the body, from the internal bodily organs ; and mani-
festations, on his part, of pleasure and of pain (or pleasantness
and unpleasantness) soon occur which enable the adult to recognize
that for the child certain occurrences within his environment are
already becoming experiences.
Turning the eyes to the sun-lit window, starting at a sudden
sound, feeling with lips and hands in seeking for the mother's
breast which gives him nourishment — ^these acts, in spite of their
partly automatic, partly instinctive character, are the first signs that
the newborn child is taking notice of the surrounding world. In
the apperception of these impressions (Eindrucke) by the infant
there lies the germ (Keim) of the psychical process. To blinking
at a dazzling light, screaming immediately succeeds. Hearing the
tinkling of the bells on his sledge induces at once an expression of
surprise — one of the most primitive feelings of infancy. A dis-
tressed wrinkling of the skin of the face follows scratching the
53
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54 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
finger-nail upon glass. As soon as the first smile illumines the
baby's face the mother loses no opportunity for calling forth on the
features of her darling those sunbeams of joy, provoking them by
means of all the little tendernesses and coaxing tones to which no
normal child remains insensible through the first few months of life.
Indeed, even the baby to whom falls but little loving care crows very
early, contented on his pillow, when sunlight and wind trace a moving
shadow-picture on the coverlet of his bed. Untiringly his eye fol-
lows the continual change of figures, and the rhythmic movements
of the curtain-fringes in carriage or basket offer the little human
being the first incentive to seize some object.
Of all the sensations characteristic of the first period of life
there is none that has such great importance for the affective side
of it as do muscular sensations. They become an inexhaustible
source of pleasure and pain to the infant a few weeks, even a few
days, old. "The first feelings of pleasure," writes Compayre,*
"spring from the systematic (progressive), moderate exercise of
the sense-organs, and from the satisfaction of the bodily needs.
Merely to exercise the muscles, whether it be those of the eye
or of the arms and legs — even in and for itself — causes the child
pleasure, — ^pleasure of a sort that he was prepared for in advance
by his experiences within the mother's uterus, through the move-
ments of his own body, as well as through the mechanical eflFects
of external pressure exerted during the walking and other move-
ments of the mother.
There is a better basis than simple superstition for the popular
belief that those children are of especially erotic nature whose
mothers during pregnancy have continued sexual intercourse until
near delivery. In short there is reason to believe that it is not
alone through the direct transmission of mental qualities that a
strongly marked sexuality can be established in the infant; it may
be induced also through purely physical influences resulting from
the shakings of the mother's uterus, a source of stimulation in
which a variety of muscle and skin sensations take their rise that
have a certain effect long before the infant has reached complete
maturity. This physically conditioned, heightened capacity for
sexual feelings is observable as well in boys as girls; while, as is
well known, the psychic transmission is a crossed one as a rule. If
this assumption proves to be correct, then skin and muscle erotism
must be regarded as the most primitive form of sexual feeling.
1 Compayr^, Die Entwicklung der Kindesseele, p. 133.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 55
Infants certainly take much pleasure in these skin and muscle sen-
sations, as is evident from the fact that even in the very first days
children often show a strong desire to scratch. The Scupins* re-
port in regard to their little son, that on the very first day he
scratched his own face, and on the second day gave his grand-
mother painful scratches as she bent over him tenderly, and his
little fingers struck in with claw-like firmness. In the third month
the boy was tearing and scratching his own little hands; in the
eighth, it brought him great delight to tousle his father's beard.
And the latest form of diversion into which, according to his parents'
statement, he threw himself with passionate zeal, was making a
grasping movement toward their eyes.
Whatever is practiced passionately always has an erotic under-
tone; and, as a matter of fact, the infant who finds a source of
pleasure in strong muscular activity always exhibits outward
signs of emotion, such as increased brilliancy of the eyes, flushed
chedcs, and so forth, that are well known to the adult as indications
of sexual excitement. Scratching with the fingernails is one of the
first acts for which the infant uses his newfound strength, and this
tendency, after having been abandoned in the first years of life
under the influence of training, often appears again spontaneously
as an accompaniment of the sexual act, a time when, in many ways,
and in both normal and abnormal (perverse) conditions of sexual
excitement, the pleasure-accented indulgences of earliest childhood
come to life again. It follows from this reasoning that over and
above all the manifestations of personal choice, especially as shown
in efforts at avoiding annoying compulsion and restraint, the child
must have experienced, in his earliest dealings with the sex-passion,
feelings similar to those which make their appearance in the mature
person under analogous conditions. The long-lasting influence of
the sucking-habit upon sexual development is clear proof of this.
It is in the indulgence of this habit, especially in the form of thumb-
sucking, that infants find such passionate delight." Children given
to the sucking-habit sometimes cultivate kissing,* later, as a form of
passionate enjo)rment, and they may become heavy smokers; also,
with baby girls in particular, there develops later a great fondness
^£. u. G. Scupin, Bubis erste Kindheit, Tagebuch uber die seel. Ent-
wicklung eines Kindes, I, p. 8 und p. 27.
» To describe it the word " Wonnesaugen " has been used, a term indicat-
ing a state of bliss induced by sucking thumbs, fingers, etc. [Trans.]
* Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. Trans. No. 7, Nerv. and
Ment Dis. Monograph Series.
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56 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
for nibbling sweets, a habit which dies out, or at least largely falls
off, when normal sexual intercourse is taken up. It is a striking
fact that in almost all languages a relation is recognized between
sweetmeats and kissing, as is shown in the giving to the former of
special names, such as: "Busserl," "baiser," "baciucchio" (a
dainty common in the vicinity of Milan).'
To consider that this habit of pleasure-sucking, whether with
reference to his own body or to foreign objects, counts only as a
manifestation of an instinct to satisfy the sense of hunger — as so
many investigators do— seems not to cover the ground. Also the
argument that children immediately stop sucking when full-fed is
overbalanced by the fact that even the satiated child* sometimes
sucks for hours on the rubber nipple and other contrivances of in-
genious nurses, with contented expression of face, and begins to
scream and cry the moment the "pacifier" (SchnuUer) slips away
from him. He is just as well satisfied if he can carry fingers or
toes to his lips, although the feeling of hunger is not stilled thereby.
It is through the activity of the erogenous zones — ^such as lips,
fingers, toes — ^that the infant procures himself pleasure; and since
in sucking upon his own body the child not only makes himself
independent of the outside world, but also secures a reinforced
stimulus of two-fold origin, his pleasure becomes redoubled. It is
for this reason that children with these sucking tendencies cling so
tenaciously to their habit.
Prcyer^ has recorded the observation that by putting his finger
into the mouth of a child whose head had just left the mother's
womb, and rubbing the tongue rhythmically, he could excite un-
mistakable sucking-movements. In this so strongly developed sen-
sitiveness to touch, the first beginnings of the sex-impulse may be
assumed to find expression. In speaking of this experiment Preyer
says that the child, to judge from the expression of his face, was
most agreeably affected. This observation finds confirmation in
the common use of a never-failing means of quieting the infant.
Nursemaids know very well how their charge stops his apparently
causeless crying if they stick a finger in his mouth and in that way
^ In English we have " molasses kisses/' etc. [Tsans.]
• " At first we did not allow the boy to adopt the bad habit of sucking a
' pacifier ' — instead of doing that, he was fond of sucking his fingers ; indeed,
he stuck his whole fist in his mouth, even after he had just been drinking
(loth week)." Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 8.
f Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, IV Aufl., pp. 20 u, 65. Eng. trans., " The
Mind of the Child."— [Ed.]
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 57
excite the nerves of lips and palate by tickling. This is simply a
variation of a practice in vogue among unscrupulous nurses, who
tickle the child directly on the genitals in order to keep him quiet
or to put him to sleep. The Freudian School sees in this habit of
finger-sucking (Ludeln) a very early manifestation of the sex-im-
pulse, with reference to which the lips form an erotically marked
zone. In the case of my own nephew I have observed repeatedly
that as a result of sucking throughout the night his fingers carry,
in the morning, the specific odor of the feminine genitals. Several
mothers have reported to me analogous observations. This odor
must come from the prolonged action (during several hours) of
saliva upon tiie skin of the finger. It seems as if a pleasure de-
rived from a sense'of smell was included, in his case, in the pleasure
produced by sucking. In fact, in his fourth year, when the attempt
was made to keep him from this habit by calling attention to the
bad odor of his finger, my nephew replied : " Oh, I like that smell I "
Possibly this liking arises from memories of odors associated with
the intra-uterine state. This conjecture stands in apparent contra-
diction to the view of many investigators who deny the infant an
olfactory sense during the first days. The greater probability, I
think, is in favor of the view that the child has no opportunity
during those first days to experience, in its own form, this odor
for which he shows such liking, but that something like it is pro-
duced, perhaps, by the admixture of saliva, milk, and skin odors.
It is reasonable to suspect that the strong significance of the sense
of smell in the sexual life of many persons is not to be referred
solely to intense anal-erotism in childhood, but also in part to the
habit of sucking. In favor of this suspicion the special liking of a
great many persons for the Capryl group of chemical substances*
should be mentioned, since these compounds are chemically related
to the secretions of the genital, but not directly to those of the anal
zone. For such people the "Capryl group" constitutes a distinct
and powerful stimulus of their libido. The frequent habit of very
little children of pressing the face into the lap, or into the arm-pit,
of an adult seems to be connected with this liking. The same
sort of fondness is shown by young dogs and cats, and is not to
be explained by the pleasant feeling of warmth, alone; for, in order
to press the head into a person's arm-pit, the little animals often
sacrifice a comfortable for an uncomfortable position.
* Capryl group (Kaprylgruppe) : Capryl, the radical CsH„ occurring in
caprylic acid and other compounds. Caprylic acid (CJiuOa), a fatty add
with a faint, disagreeable odor, occurring in cow's butter and in cocoanut oil
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58 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
Even to the child in the cradle sucking offers an acceptable sub-
stitute for almost any pleasure which he desires but which he must
renoimce. Sucking is a dispenser of comfort in every despondent
mood, just as in later years the joys of onanism are frequently
sought in times of bitterness and humiliation. In his eighth month
Scupin's Bubi used to compensate himself for not being allowed
the mother's breast, by sucking the thumb of his left hand, though
he continued to emit sounds of dissatisfaction through his nose;
until at last, comforted, he would fall asleep. He would not let
himself be robbed of this pleasure, and showed anger and opposi-
tion as soon as anyone tried to remove his thumb, red and swollen
from sucking® (ninth month). For the tenth month the report
reads: '^Sucking the finger has finally taken the place of crying,
and is, therefore, a sign of hunger as well as of resignation. Now
when an object is denied the child, when he should go to sleep,
or the like, to comfort himself he sticks his finger into his mouth,
and only peculiar sounds sent out through the nose declare his dis-
satisfaction, his indignation, his pain, in a way not to be misunder-
stood." And from the eleventh month, "Everything forbidden
excites the youngster extraordinarily ; his demand for knives, scis-
sors, and table-utensils is very intense; and if all such things are
taken from him, sometimes he puts on a touchingly resigned look
and calmly sticks his left thumb into his mouth — ^that thumb which
always shows some wounds from self-inflicted bites." The habit
which is so extremely common among older children, of putting a
finger in the mouth or of biting the nails at times of embarrass-
ment, of shame, often of obstinacy, is to be regarded as a survival
of previous finger-sucking ; that is to say, even the temporary feel-
ing of unpleasantness demands for its relief the tried and trusted
method of excitation of the erogenous zones. It goes with the
sexual character of sucking (des Lutschens) that, like the sexual
act, it proves an effective means of inducing sleep.
In order to be able to suck her left thumb undisturbed, Shinn's**
niece, in the third month, preferred to be taken on her mother's
right arm; and when so placed she would fall asleep, with every
evidence of thorough satisfaction. "In the middle of this month
she was given a small, closed rubber nipple, on which she then
sucked as she had before on her fingers, and within eight days she
» Scupin, Tagebuch, I, pp. 27, 29, 35, 42.
^^ M. W. Shinn, Korperliche u. geistige Entwicklung eines Kindes, bear-
beitct von W. Glabach und E. Weber, pp. 399, 401. This is probably the Ger-
man rendering of " The Biography of a Baby."— Ed.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 59
had learned to connect the thought of sucking after this fashion
with that of falling asleep/* In the sixth month, it was seen that
the "pacifier" (Saugpropfen) exerted a really hypnotic influence.
But since the child, as Shinn further records, did not like to go to
sleep without the "pacifier," and also the moment it had slipped
from her during the night would cry for hours at a time, the mother
tried hard to break up this habit, but in vain. "The child must
have found its continuance both agreeable and effective. Perhaps
certain particularly pleasant sensations were connected with it.
For twice in the last half of this month, when the rubber nipple was
held up before her, she greeted it with sounds of joy and with
springing movements of the hands and feet. I have observed the
same thing in other babies when they were greeting their nursing-
bottle." Shinn adds to this report the correct surmise that the
pleasure did not have to do solely with a recognition of the use of
these articles as possible sources of nourishment; but she does not
carry out her idea any further.
From my observations in the case of my nephew, I can say that
the whole expression of his face while he is sucking his fingers — a
habit which he has practised intensively from the earliest time up to
the present (his seventh year) — is, at first, distinctly that of sexual
excitement; while a little later, as he gradually falls asleep, it
changes to one of comfortable and sensuous relaxation. Toward
the end of the first year, he combined sucking on the thumb and
third finger of his left hand with simultaneous rh)rthmic pulling on
the bedspread with the fingers of his right hand. I maintain that,
with this child, these movements are a substitute for onanistic ac-
tivity, since the boy, even in his first month, as soon as he was un-
dressed, used to pull hard at his genital organ. The proposition
that infantile onanism is of regular occurrence has been much dis-
puted, but can scarcely be denied. With boys it often begins early,
as a result of the measures taken in caring for the body, and as a
consequence of the easy accessibility of the genitals to mechanical
excitations ; while with girls, on account of the more concealed loca-
tion of the genitalia, masturbation takes place far less frequently
during the period of early infancy. But with them, too, the signs
of sexual excitement usually make their appearance, thanks to the
senseless fashion of clothing infants prevalent at present. For in-
stance, the so-called " Durchzug," a small linen cloth used for pre-
venting soreness of the thighs, is well adapted to excite the highly
erogenous genital zone ; and pressing together the upper thighs is a
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60 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
characteristic form of self-gratification to the little girl. But, since
mothers and nurses naturally try hard to prevent onanistic acts on
the part of the infant, the latter soon transfers the source of pleasure
to a more easily reached and a more harmless zone, the mouth ; and
takes up sucking as a substitute for the forbidden pleasure. Hence,
sucking stands not only as the earliest form of lip-erotism, but also
an early act (Leistung) of intelligence on the part of the infant.
One mother reported to me, in regard to her boy, that by the age
of seven months he had tried again and again, with sly glances, to
masturbate; and that as soon as this was prevented, with strong
obstinacy he betook himself to finger-sucking. The all too anxious
" breaking " of infant onanism — frequently accompanied by painful
punishments (even blows) — ^may contribute much to the develop-
ment of fear and may lead also to habits of deceit and of defiant
obstinacy.
One of the direct outcomes of the measures used in the phys-
ical care of children is the awakening of the pleasure in being
naked. Even though the change of temperature is felt as uncom-
fortable by the child, yet the relief from the cramping of tight
clothes, which comes from being undressed, is so delightful that
the other sensation is no longer noticed. It is certainly true that
there is no time when a child feels so free to use his muscles as
when he is naked; and the tickling contacts of the loosened cloth-
ing rubbing against the skin must help to induce the vigorous
throwing about of the limbs which still further intensifies his pleas-
ant sense of freedom. This is a sort of stimulus which is, more-
over, apt to be increased through repetition, as the child's mother,
with anxious solicitude, makes ever fresh attempts to keep him
covered from the air. And with all this there come, of course,
fresh chances for the child to show his new-found power of re-
sistance to his mother's will by striving to prolong the conditions
that he has found so full of pleasure.*^ I have often had occasion
to observe with what slyness my nephew, in his eleventh month,
fought to be naked and came oflf victor ; how he would watch for the
moments when his nurse or mother turned away, in order to shake
off the hated coverlet, and to renew the pleasures of sucking his toes
or biting any part of his body that he could reach.
Delight in the nakedness of one's own body is one of the first
and most evident manifestations of the infantile auto-eroticism.
From this source, reinforced by the erotic pleasure which the use
** Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 4
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 6l
of the eye brings to the child, arise the exhibUionism-tendency
and the spying or peeking-habit (Schaulust) of later years. And
it is also one of the roots of Narcissism^* which frequently, even
by the end of the first year, comes to light in open, undisguised
form. The unfolding of these impulses is greatly furthered by
the measures taken in training the child. The command to cease
from uncovering himself is too often accompanied by a half-con-
cealed smile on the part of the proud mother or by a spying on the
part of other adults who may be present that gives them more grati-
fication than they are quite aware of. There cannot but grow out
of this a certain sort of excitement, which is capable of making
its appeal even to the smallest child. In a similar way, the play-
ing of a harmless game like hide-and-seek may induce pleasure-
accented experiences which connect themselves with any part of
the child's body. The following case, observed by me, is typical
of many: A ten-months-old boy with whom his mother plays
*' peek-a-boo," throwing a doth over her head every time, imitates
his mother faithfully in lifting his little shirt high at every " Da Da"
on her part, and he does this with joyful screams that are all the
more joyful the more vehement is his mother's cry of "Shame I
Shame ! " If any doubt could be entertained as to the propriety of
ascribing the chief interest in this game, for the child, to the (un-
conscious) longing to exhibit himself, this should be dispelled when
it is known that ever since his birth the little boy in question has
been the subject of constant admiration for the beauty of his body;
and that even in his sixth month he showed a longing to lie naked
before any guests that might call. Educational blunders of the
sort indicated by this story are committed more frequently than one
would believe possible; and the excuse of parents — ^that the child
is not yet old enough to know better — ^has nothing more to say for
itself in such a case as this than when used to justify any one of the
many other careless sins of omission of adults in their treatment
of young children.
In proportion as the child gains better control of his young
limbs the pleasure in moving them grows greater. A dawning con^
sciousness of self and an increasing self-confidence — ^the outgrowth
of infantile auto-erotism — awakens with the first successful attempts
at sitting, standing, creeping, running. In regard to this E. and G.
Scupin,*" in the eleventh week of their child's life, make the follow-
ing note : " For some days past the mother has been teaching the
12 Love of self, in a physical and mental sense. [Trans.]
i»Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 8.
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62 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
boy to sit up ; it goes surprisingly well. These exercises obviously
give the child pleasure, and he demands them often by crying and
by attempts to raise himself." Again with reference to the sixth
month :^* " A favorite new movement is rocking the upper part of
the body; with a truly roguish face Bubi sits in his carriage, bends
forward, strikes out with his feet, and springs backward. In this
fashion he rocks back and forth untiringly with evident pleasure.
One day, sitting on his mother's lap he stretched his little arms
tow:ard the metal handles of the carriage, seized them, and then by
rocking the upper part of his body backward and forward (occa-
sionally, too, by bending and stretching his little arms) he pushed
the wagon to and fro, only helped thus far by his mother, that she
yielded to every one of his movements. While doing this he put
on a laughably self-satisfied air, and an expression as of one ex-
pecting praise. This was more marked than anyone would have be-
lieved possible. The consciousness of physical achievement, of
having performed an act requiring muscular strength, gives just as
much delight to the infant as it does to other children; and leads
him to reject outside help at a very early age. He likes, however,
to feel that adults are present, from whom help can be obtained
whenever his own strength gives out, and who — ^this is the chief
point — will pay him the deserved tribute of admiration. For that
reason, the child who is tenderly cared for learns to use his muscles
and his special senses much earlier and with less effort than does
an infant entrusted to indifferent attendants.
The high degree of fascination which swinging and being rocked
in a cradle possess for even the very youngest children is due to
the induction of sexual excitement^* through rhythmic mechanical
shaking of the body (Freud). The child finds the rocking-motion
of his carriage so agreeable that he is often inspired by it to talk
to himself, in baby fashion, while it is going on.*' Also, the infant's
1* Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. i8.
^^ It is, of course, a matter of opinion, and largely a question of classi-
fication, what degree of assent this proposition should command. The point
to remember is that Freud's view was formed on the basis of a very large
experience with nervous invalids whose illnesses were traceable in part to
demands for excitement originating in accumulated infantile experiences.
[Trans.]
^® C. and W. Stem, Monographien uber die seel. Entwicklung des Kindes.
I. Die Kindcrsprache, p. 82. " At three months of age, whenever Giinther is
taken out in his carriage h^ begins 'to tell little stories' even when the
carriage-curtains are down. Therefore it is not the effect of the changing
views, but it is the movement of the carriage which puts him in a happy frame
of mind."
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 63
shouts Upon being tossed in the air, and the pleasure which he finds
in rolling from side to side^^ demonstrate (if taken in connection
with the moist brilliancy of his eyes and his flushed cheeks) the
sexual undertone of his feeling^. This explains the persistent
fondness which boys and girls have for swinging of every kind, even
if it be only a see-saw on the edge of a chair. One may also see
how, on the other hand, many a child's dread and dislike of rh3rth-
mic motion in later years^® is probably to be traced back to an ex-
cess of indulgence in this sort of pleasure during early years; for
fear is often — ^as disgust is always — ^the expression of a reaction
against a former — ^now forbidden — sort and source of pleasure.
Most children show during the second half of their first year of
life a striking fondness for fingering very small objects — ^hairs,
crumbs, etc. — z, liking such as can hardly be accounted for except on
the supposition that their sense of touch is very highly developed.
Taking hold of tiny objects — ^which grown persons can pick up only
with difficulty — brings obvious pleasure to the infant. Thus"
Strumpell reports that his little eight-months-old daughter took
special delight in picking up very small objects such as crumbs of
bread, beads, and so forth ; and little Scupin, too, so we are told,*^
used to expend a good deal of energy in pulling out single hairs from
his parents' heads. "The objects which he took especial pleasure
in handling, during his twelfth month, were very minute, being of
no interest except from their diminutive size. In a complicated
toy the parts that he cared most about were a screw, a knob, a
tassel, a little bell; his interest in the carpet seemed to center on a
crumb, in the table-cloth on a spot, in the wall-paper (Tapete) on a
scarcely visible dot in the design. The great significance of the
nerves of the skin, for the good health and well-being of the child,
is also to be recognized from his behavior in the bath. The delight
with which he doubles his little fists, the flourishing of the limbs,
all give evidence of an instinctive tendency, observable not only
with infants but also with older children and even among adults,
to react with pleasure to strong stimulation of the skin. The mild
warmtTi of a tepid bath, the slight resistance of the fluid, may
awaken in the infant a dim memory of his life before birth; and
this may be one cause that prompts him to assume the prenatal posi-
tion, with legs drawn up high and arms flexed against the body.
!■' See above, Shinn, pp. 307, 308.
i*As in car-sickness. [Trans.]
i»L. V. Strumpell, Psychologische Padagogik, p. 359.
*<> Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 46.
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64 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
Many children continue through years to show a preference for this
position in sleep; and the pressing of the folded arms against the
breast, such as one sees among children and even grown people
when they are listening intently to stories which make them shudder
with excitement, seems to me to be a survival from the prehistoric
period of the child's life. In a way not to be disregarded or over-
looked, the tendency on the part of the infant to have sensations
of a sexual nature also manifests itself during the bath, as well as
during other attentions found needful in the care of children. That
boys, a few days old, show real erections at such times is a daily
experience of midwives, and is boasted of to the young mother as
a sign of potential virility. One little boy, only thirteen days old,
was reported as having wet chin and mouth with a stream of urine ;
and another baby boy, while having his third bath, showed a strong
erection accompanied by symbolic spreading of the fingers. The
latter movement was indeed observed by Preyer as occurring by
itself, and that, too, when the fingers were dry, so that the spread-
ing could not have been caused by wetness.** Preyer continues:
"Even on the seventh day the expression of pleasure seen in his
wide-open eyes immediately after the bath was quite diflferent from
what it had been before. No other sense-impression {Eindruck) of
any kind is able, at this period, to call forth such an expression of
satisfaction!'
The strong skin erotism of the infant also makes itself evident
in his reaction to kisses. Such love-tokens bestowed upon every
part of the body are acknowledged with shouts of laughter;" but
here, too, one becomes gradually aware of favorite zones — such as
the neck, arms, legs. It is a striking fact that to kisses on the
mouth very little children will respond with sucking-movements** —
later, with biting-movements, even when as yet there are no teeth ;
but such children exhibit no feeling of pleasure at these times.
Quite often, after the first year, children refuse, for a time, to allow
themselves to be kissed. Finally, and as affording further evidence
of the existence and importance of this heightened skin-erotism, it
is noteworthy that children often show a passive acquiescence, and
even exhibit signs of pleasure, when kisses are replaced by gentle
bitings. E. and G. Scupin record thus about their little boy in the
sixth month: "He stuck his finger into his mother's laughing
21 Preyer, loco citato, p. 74.
*2 Scupin, Tagebuch, I, pp. 20, 74, 106; Shinn, 1. c, p. 206.
2« In the active kiss Compayre sees a " ressouvenir " of the lip-movement
when nursing at the mother's breast (L c, p. 98).
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 65
mouth, whereupon she bit him. Astonished, Bubi raised his eye-
brows and looked at her questioningly. When his mother bit once
more, he crowed for joy but promptly drew back the little hand.
After a short pause, again of his own accord, he stuck his fingers
into mother's open mouth, and at the same time looked very ex-
pectant. She bit again, and immediately his unrestrained laughter
sounded forth."
M. W. Shinn** is of the opinion that, to the little child, eating
(s. e., sucking), biting, and kissing, all have, at first, one and the
same meaning.** Certainly not until later does the true, social sig-
nificance of kissing become clear to him, although it is in the first
year more especially that his experience in being kissed (by his
mother) is so rich ; he accepts kisses as an agreeable stimulation of
the skin, but often refuses to give them in return. Shinn and
Preyer report the same thing ; while Scupin's little son,** even in the
first month, reacted pleasurably to kisses, in particular to noisy
kisses, ». e,, kisses with strong local skin excitation. Gentle biting
and scratching produce in the very little child not only no pain, but
actual pleasure ; so that in skin- and muscle-erotism we must recog-
nize one of the roots of sado-masochism^'' — in particular, of the
auiO'sado-masochism, far more frequent in the child than in the
adult. Tiedemann*' regards the fact that, in the first months of
life, his little son gave himself severe scratch-wounds and blows
in the face, as a proof of inability at this stage to distinguish his
own body from that of another person's. Preyer, too,** sees in the
self-infliction of wounds in the case of very young children, simply
a lack of independent and thorough self-perception (des Ich-Ge-
fiihls). To-day we know from certain reactions of the child that
the inflicting as well as the passive experiencing of pain is — ^under
certain conditions — felt by him as a source of sensuous pleasure.
Through the union of sadistic and masochistic feelings within one's
own body, the opportunity is given for experiencing enjoyment of
a two-fold sort, since then the Ego is both subject and object at
«*M. W. Shinn, L c, p. 345-
*« G>mpare the popular sayings, " She is pretty enough to eat," ** I could
eat you, I love you so much."
*« Scupin, 1. c, p. 20.
^"^ ** Sadism " = the inflicting of pain for purposes of sensuous gratifica-
tion; '' masochism " = the acceptance of pain with a similar end in view.
[Trans.]
28 D. Tiedemann, Beobachtungen uber die Entwicklung der Seelen-
fahigkeiten beim Kinde, p. 10.
» Preyer, L c, pp. 381, 382.
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66 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the same time. This is probably the chief reason why the sadistic
(pain-inflicting) activity of the child is directed in the earliest days
toward his own person. The pleasure is further intensified through
this — ^that the child takes care not to go, in his pain-infliction, beyond
the point set by his power to recognize the pain as pleasure. To
speak of another and analogous source of excitation, although the
fashion of the present day as regards clothing secures for the in-
fant plenty of chance to move freely, yet the daily wrapping in the
bath-towel is an operation that allows for an abundance of agree-
able stimulation for skin and muscles. And older children likewise
manage through the use of closely fitting undergarments, shoes, and
so forth, and by scratching, to provide chances for these stimula-
tions of the skin. Among the auto-sadistic acts of the infant,
scratching stands in the foreground as for a while the sole possibility
of that sort that his muscular development permits. On the very
first day after his birth, the Scupin boy's hands had to be boimd
up because he scratched his face, and even on that day he resisted
the restraint by kicking.*®
The strong impression which the sight and touch of a brush made
upon him in his eleventh month'^ is, as I believe, to be classified as
masochism. At least, I observed the same behavior in my nephew
at the same age. With a roguish " Prick ! Prick ! " he tapped very
gently on the rather coarse bristles. A ten-months-old little girl
acted in the same way toward brushes. Since the child, at such an
early age, makes no diflference between " animate " and " inanimate,"
a brush may be assumed to appear to him like a human being by
whom he allows himself to be pricked, in this instance, like his
mother, to whom he holds out his little hand for the bite, given
in fun. The slight pricking evidently causes, in addition to the pain,
an agreeable tickling of the skin. . There are not a few adults who,
without being pronounced masochists, declare that they feel a mod-
erate pain to be, in a sense, pleasant. Aside from the distinctly
morbid forms under which masochism and sadism appear in later
years, where sensuous pleasure is found in actually tormenting one-
self or other people, the existence of these same tendencies is hinted
at by various acts, among which I have indicated scratching as the
most primitive. As soon as the child's teeth come, he knows how
to use them vigorously against himself and against people near him.
Thumb-sucking is often united with biting. Not until much later
•<^ Scupin, L c, p. I.
«i Scupin, 1. c, p. 40.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 67
does the child make use of the strength of his arms to g^ve blows,
and that of his legs in kicking. Conjoined with the masochistic
tendencies of the child there is found, even very early, a demand for
sympathy ; while, on the other hand, the child of sadistic tendencies
shows a wish to be admired, even feared, for his strength. Indeed,
mothers and nurses often take the lead in playing with the child a
kind of game in which they pretend (to feel pain whenever he beats
and pulls them. In the sixth month the little Scupin baby clearly
showed his sadistic vein; we read: "He strikes at his mother,
clutches her nose with his little hands and pulls it.'* For the eighth
month the report is : " His newest passion consists in trying to seize
his parents* eyes; evidently it angers him every time they hide
themselves behind the eye-lids at the approach of his merciless little
hand.'* In the ninth month : " Without pity his hands scratch our
faces so that we cry out with pain. Often during these acts there
comes a truly cruel gleam in the boy's eyes, his nostrils inflate, and
he goes on with the martyring process, such as pulling out single
hairs, making grasping movements toward our eyes, pinching us,
and scratching us. If someone puts out his tongue, the child claws
savagely at it with his nails and screams for joy. His mother's
finger learns, through painful experience during the daily cleansing
of his mouth, how sharp his teeth are getting, for then he bites
energetically with downright diabolical eagerness.""* These in-
stances of unconscious cruelty in the child are sufficient to show how
strongly this impulse demands an active outlet; how it turns toward
the very persons for whom the child's affection is the warmest;
and how, at length, upon the impulse becoming gratified, the child's
features light up with animation and take on an expression thaf
recalls that of the adult when under the influence of strong sexual
excitement. And just as this excitement, with many adults, becomes
intensified when the element of physical pain is superadded, so, too,
in the case of the child, and not seldom, the necessity is felt of
exhibiting the strength of his passionate desires through sadistic
acts. For this statement also, a confirmatory passage is to be
found, in the Scupin diary,'* relating to the eleventh month of
their son's life and telling of his first acquaintance with a little girl
about six months older. While this little girl was looking at him
indifferently, the boy's play of features showed extraordinary ex-
citement — ^interest, surprise, joy, and a deep-seated curiosity. When
•2 Scupin, Tagebuch, pp. 19, 30, 31.
** Scupin, Tagebuch, p. 44.
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68 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the little girl, upon seeing him, suddenly said "Dolly!" the very
perception that she spoke excited him strongly. For very delight,
or perhaps too, in order to imitate her, suddenly he sent forth a
flood of indistinct syllables, became more and more excited, and
with a quick exulting cry struck her in the face. Manifestly that
was meant to be a caress. Then he managed in a rough way to
snatch a biscuit out of her hands, and after that the doll. Yet it
was all done in such a spirit of affectionate playfulness that one
could not think of his acts as signifying rage or ugliness of temper.
Again, the boy, " O," bit and scratched his nurse's breast until she
cried out loudly from pain, whereupon he grew all the more excited.
Indeed his finger-nails became very dangerous to the hair and faces
of people around him.
I have come to the conclusion, through questioning a number
of mothers, that in the first years of life it makes no difference — as
regards the liability to sadistic and masochistic tendencies — ^whether
the child is male or female. The concurrent testimony of many
observers has established the fact that every sadistically inclined
person is also a masochist, and vice versa. But as boys are more
aggressive, in a general sense, than girls, with the former the sadistic
tendency is pushed more into the foreground. Furthermore, by
virtue of being looked on as in fact a masculine attribute, this
tendency (which often takes the form of cruelty) is not so ener-
getically repressed, by nurses and attendants, in the little boy as it
is in the little girl. Forms of conduct that, in the case of the boy,
are regarded as containing the germs of future strength and are
rebuked with smiles, are considered, in the case of the little girl, as
objectionable indications of an unwomanly character. In spite of
his frequently cruel expressions of countenance when performing
sadistic (i, e,, cruel) acts, the conscious perception of the cruel ele-
ment in these acts, and therewith the conscious purpose of inflicting
pain upon another person, is lacking in the child for a long time.
This fact comes out in Scupin's diary,'* in the following important
note from the child's fifteenth month : " Often, because of having
to sit still while being dressed or undressed, he kicks angrily or
bites his mother in the arm or on the shoulder even through thick
clothing and with such force as to cause her severe pain. Several
times when his mother called out ' Ow ! ' it pleased him so much that
he bit himself hard in the arm and then likewise said * Ow 1 ' And
«* Scupin, Tagebuch, I, 62.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 69
when he felt the painful effects of his bite on his own flesh, he made
a very surprised face."***
It would seem that the choice of games by little children is de-
termined to some extent by whether the sadistic or the masochistic
tendency predominates. Every attentive observer is aware that
even without the aid of adults, healthy children invent little games of
one or another sort — ^and one of their roots lies in the awakening
muscle-power which is striving for development. That conscious
volition is an essential factor in these early eflForts, as always in
real play, can be recognized from the satisfied smile on the child's
face after success — from the displeased expression that attends re-
peated failure. All the muscle-groups take more or less part in the
activities of play, but more than all the rest those which are con-
cerned in movements of touching and seizing. These movements
are often continued until weariness ensues, and they excite in the
child's consciousness feelings of pleasure or of pain ; if such move-
ments are in part purely instinctive, and arise from the uncon-
scious impulse on the child's part to use the muscles, yet it must be
recognized that they supply sources of stimulation which are of the
utmost importance for the development of perception through the
senses (Sinnesempfindungen). The playful turning of the head
from side to side at the sound of a noise, whether it be the bells
of the sledge or the voice of the mother who lures the first smile
from the child by means of her "Peek-a-boo" ("Da-Da!"); the
stretching and straining of the little fingers toward the fringes on
the carriage-curtain; — all such movements and efforts provide
the little human being endless delight and are happy play to him.
And from play he gains his first experiences in regard to things
in his environment ; he learns to distinguish his little self from the
outside world through the varieties of feelings, sometimes painful,
which it brings to him. Slowly but inevitably are formed the con-
cepts (Begriffe) of large and small, round and square, near and
far. And all these new perceptions are accompanied by pleasure or
by pain. The child remains indifferent to whatever does not affect
him in one of these two modes of feeling; and in seeking to repro-
duce or to escape these feelings, as the case may be, he demands so
frequent a repetition of the occurrences of daily life that at last
almost any kind of a change in them, however slight, is felt at first
as an impression, then as an experience. In the first period of life
*^The mother of a certain little boy had to bite him to stop his biting
other people. He never had known how it hurt to be bitten. [Trans.]
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70 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
sense-impressions must have a certain intensity in order to be per-
ceived at all ; in short, they must be powerful enough to excite either
pain or pleasure. But even to direct the attention toward something
is a source of pleasure to the infant — sl pleasure which, to be sure,
dies out before long on account of his liability to grow weary.
The first place among all the sense-organs, as dispenser of pleas-
ure, belongs to the sense of taste. That I have not spoken of it
until now has been for this reason — because in the service of play it
is not utilized until relatively late. For the habit of sucking, whellier
on one's own body or upon some foreign object, concerns far more
the gratification of the erotic functions of the skin and mucous
membrane than those of the sense of taste. This latter sense is
drawn first into relation with play when it becomes conjoined defi-
nitely with the sense of smell. First to smell a flower and then to
taste it (eat it) seems to the child the natural sequence of events, of
course. But with the development of the sense of smell, the child's
interest awakens in his own "defecation products." TWs is an
interest which no child is without, and one which (as long as the
particular child in question has not learned to feel disgust) not
seldom becomes pronounced coprophiKsm (Koprophilie). Infants
with this tendency instinctively like to choose their own time for
having their bowel-movements, and show an astonishing cleverness
in availing themselves of the very moment when nurse leaves the
room, although before that they had let themselves be urged in vain
to perform their task. No cross words, no punishments keep the
little oflFender from soiling hands, face, and clothes in a play so full
of pleasure; occasionally, too, it happens that he brings his soiled
hands to his mouth and thus discovers a new taste that gives him a
special sort of gratification which he signalizes by the movements
of his lips. A little later it may happen, obviously as the result of
a double impulse both to give up and to maintain his interest in
these bowel-excretions, that a process of shifting, or substitution,
takes place in the infant's mind ; as the outcome of this process, he
begins to decline certain dishes like green and brown vegetables,
eggs, etc., which from their color and consistency remind one of
feces — ^and he does this while still retaining his coprophilic habits.*'
Thus my little nephew, who became a pronounced coprophilist very
early and remained such until the end of his third year, beg^n sud-
denly even in his eleventh month to show a decided disgust at
*^ This sentence has been amplified somewhat, from the original, to make
its obvious and important meaning clearer. [Trans.]
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 7 1
spinach and other dark-colored vegetables. It is a fair guess that
his nurse-maid, who it is true had had much to endure in conse-
quence of this tendency of her little charge, had punished him in
the way employed when dogs and cats are "house-broken." At
any rate the sudden change in the little fellow's food-preferences
was decidedly suspicious, and the boy's comments at a later period
strengthened this suspicion. Eggs, for example, which he ate dur-
ing his first year with almost greedy pleasure — ^his gaze fastened
intently on the egg-cup — ^he began all at once in his twelfth month
to refuse. Little "O" behaved in exactly similar fashion in his
third year.
In close connection, as a rule, with coprophilism, stand anal and
urethral erotism,*^ The emotional interest thus designated does
not take on, at first, the somewhat elaborate self-conscious form
that it assumes later; but it appears, nevertheless, even in the first
months of the infant's life, in the shape of a wilful holding back of
the feces ; while, on the other hand, definite indications of pleasure
are often given when the evacuation does take place, but at the
wrong time. It is also noteworthy that these signs of pleasure are
altogether different from those that simply indicate the natural relief
from tension that attends a bowel-movement ; for in the latter case
there is none of that mischievous expression on the infant's face,
none of that glancing around to detect the reaction of the by-
standers to what is going on, none of that behavior so characteristic
of the former situation. Even the cry which summons nurse or
mother sounds quite diflFerent when the excretory-act is performed
at the proper time, as a normal phase of the digestive process, from
what it does when the feces are purposely "held back" by the
child. When this happens he does not break into the plaintive cry-
ing which betokens the wish for help out of an uncomfortable
situation, but gives a cry as it were of victory, indicating at once
joy and wilfulness, a cry that says : " See what I have succeeded in
doing 1" One might say that the thinking faculty (intellect) of
the child was being considerably overestimated in attributing to him
such complicated thought-processes; but that they actually occur,
that the facts are as stated, is proved by the countless mischievous
tricks, of even small children, along these lines. Thus my nephew,
at the age of eleven months, knew well how to take advantage of
his great-aunt in sununoning attention to his bowel-needs by means
of the call " Ah-ah 1 " ; but as soon as she had made the necessary
•« Sadger, Uber Urethralerotik, Jahrb. f . psycho-an. Forschung. II. For
abstract see p. 114.
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72 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
preparations, he would run away into a distant comer of the room,
and as he went he would give a teasing, merry ** Na-na ! " Such
happenings are among the daily experiences in every nursery, and
no observing mother mistakes the intention of the child thus to get
the better of her. The mental powers of the infant, feeble though
they are, are just strong enough to utilize all the various processes
which go on within his little body as materials for pleasure and for
play. The events that mark the taking and digesting of food, and
the multiform operations incidental to the care of the body, provide
abundant materials and chances for securing gratifications of these
sorts, and the infant's absorption in them g^ves an adequate ex-
planation for the indifference which he sometimes shows to impres-
sions from the outside world.
II. The First Signs of Volitional AcriviTy
We have seen how strongly the psychic life of the infant is in-
fluenced by the functional activities of his little body, and how these
processes are attended by a sense of pleasure or of discomfort, as
the case may be. Having recognized this to be so, we cannot be
surprised that the child seeks, consciously or unconsciously, to re-
produce the experiences which brought him pleasure, and to ward
off those which he felt as limiting or painful. These forms of
reaction, instinctive and impulsive in the beginning, become the
basis of volition, as soon as the growing intelligence learns to
connect perceptions that are at first isolated with ideas having a
conscious goal. The child responds to a stimulus not by '' conscious
will" but by action. To will means to act. While still without
the power to make known his will in plastic speech, yet through
screaming, crying, seizing, touching, and kicking he is able to give
expression to his needs.
The first movements and actions which one sees the nursling per-
form (usually in the second quarter of his first year) with definite
signs of thought may be regarded as the most primitive expressions
of activity of the will. The movements which are most signifi-
cant, as corresponding to this first stage in the development of
"will," are those through which the child instinctively resists the
measures that are used for the care of his body. The will of the
infant is at first self-will, in the narrowest sense of the word.
Whatever he is obliged to do or to refrain from doing, contrary to
his desire, the young child feels as a disagreeable limitation of the
freedom of his budding personality — ^a limitation calling for vig-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 73
orous resistance. The first expressions of the infantile will take,
then, the form of negation, of refusal to do the will of those around
him. So true is this that even after the will has long since shown
itself in a constructive form, the negatory tendency is retained as
obstinacy, as defiance, even as an intentional working of harm to
others.
These views, according to which the child's will is first mani-
fested in the form of dumb opposition, afford also an explanation
of the fact (confirmed by all students of child-life) that the first
movements of the head which children make are those that are
properly called head shaking rather than nodding ; and that the word
" No " is used before " Yes." For the child, " No " is, first of all,
the expression of unwillingness ; it is an unmistakable expression of
voluntary choice, as is clearly shown by the general tendency to
double the word (" No, no "). This protest of the infantile nature
against every form of control is so powerful that, as an additional
means of expressing opposition, gesture soon becomes supported by
words. The importance of the role which thus falls to the resist-
ance-tendency, in its effect upon the development of the child, is
made clearly apparent by the study of children's dreams in which
unfulfilled wishes of the day find fulfilment. A remnant of this
tendency survives in the habit, obtaining among many adults, of
always beginning a remark with " No."^
Even in his first year of life the eflForts which the child is forced
to make in suppressing his own will are so prodigious that it is not
to be wondered at that they give place, now and then, to temporary
outbursts of passion. In other words, the restraints which the in-
fant is compelled to put upon himself in submitting to the measures
taken for the care of his body, especially when these seem to him
' imnecessary, induce a hampering sense of limitation and of strain,
and a slight provocation is then enough to bring on outbreaks of
rage before which the parents stand perplexed and helpless. If an
affectionate compliance with the child's first voluntary impulses was
more often substituted for an attempt to suppress them (which so
frequently springs from purely egoistic motives) not only would
the later training be made easier, but many a danger to the child's
mental development would be deprived of seed and soil. It is an
important matter for the building of character whether the will is
felt as more or as less free. When mothers brought face to face with
^ This is much more common in Germany than in English-speaking coun-
tries. [Trans.]
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74 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the unyielding obstinacy of a three, six, or ten-year-old child, whom
they were unable either by severity or by kindness to master, finally
excuse their failure by saying that he was just as wilful in the
cradle, they not only give a correct statement of the facts, but like-
wise make the admission that at that period, when the child was
scarcely a year old, the right way of education was missed, in favor
"pf either ill-timed severity or excessive coddling.
The latter mistake is made mainly in the case of the first-bom
or of the only child, who then, as a result of the exaggerated solici-
tude with which he finds every demand fulfilled, soon learns to pose
as a tyrant over the whole household. On the other hand, in fami-
lies where there are many children, a lack of aflfection on the part
of the parents is apt to be felt, especially by the late and unwelcome
arrivals. This lade may not manifest itself through outward neg-
lect but in less obvious ways, and yet may make a life-lasting im-
pression on the child. Too often his voluntary eflForts are nipped
in the bud, or his manifestations of rage and obstinacy suppressed
with too strong a hand, by his parents, una¥rare of the danger to
which the development of the child's character and his future rela-
tion to themselves are thus subjected. The father who boasts that
his child has been obstinate to him only a single time and, after
having received punishment, has never again dared to oppose his
will, fails to realize the fact that on that occasion he may have laid
the foundation for a permanent estrangement between himself and
his child.
Such an evaluation as this may be regarded as implying an over-
estimate of the infant's power of thought. But when one considers
how distressing the memory of the first severe punishment must
be, since the result is to make the child give up his will to that of
the father ; when one thinks how great a struggle and self-conquest
it must cost the mite of humanity to subject himself unconditionally,
and without a protest, to his father ; then one cannot but recognize
in such a piece of suppression — far transcending that which the child
could accomplish spontaneously — ^the true cause of many a strange
and deplorable fate. It is only when free activity of the will is al-
lowed to the child, so far as the well-being of his body and soul
(broadly interpreted) permits, that the conditions are created for a
happy unfolding of the little creature's capacities.
In the nursery where love and understanding reign, simply to
forbid is enough ; and in the first year of the child's life, this should
be limited to matters of purely bodily concern. The hard words
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 75
"You must" should remain unknown to the child as long as is
practicable. Fortunately, in respect to the very little child, nature
has set a limit to the eflfect of this command, in leaving him in-
capable of understanding its full meaning and with a physical in-
ability to fulfil it.
Ambition, educationally one of the most important impulses, acts
as a powerful stimulus to the will, even in earliest childhood. It la*
not solely the pleasure in muscular activity that causes the infant to
strive so tirelessly to stand, to creep and walk; another spur to his
efforts is the longing to be admired, to win the attention of his en-
vironment. How impressive are the eager efforts with which the
child raises himself to his full height on his nurse's arm! How
proudly and with what elation does he accept recognition and praise
of his strength 1 Is it not obvious that a half-conscious purpose
enters into his attempts to reproduce the situations through which
his vanity is flattered? It is just to that end that he performs
before his little public and apportions his love-favors and bestows
the tokens of his affection according to the degree of admiration
paid him.
The following experience is typical. It is about a little peasant
girl of ten months, with whom an elderly lady spending a holiday in
the country is ready enough to occupy and thereby to amuse herself.
The child first lifts her arms to attract attention, then creeps nearer
and strives with never-wearying persistence to raise herself erect,
in response to the lady's admiring challenge, " Ella is as tall as this —
as this," indicating the point with one hand. Thus the baby makes
her first independent efforts at walking; reinforcing them by con-
stantly demanding the lady's praise by casting inquiring glances in
her direction.
Occurrences of this sort, which may be seen daily in homes
where careful attention is given to the development of the children,
deserve especial mention because such acts show how instinctively
the love of admiration is rooted in the child's mind, even when the
mother's solicitude has been confined to what is essential in meeting
the child's bodily needs. The retarded development of powers of
mind and body in the case of children who lack loving and intelli-
gent care during the first months of life, is to be attributed to a
late awakening of ambition.
The opportunities for progress through imitation open a broad
field for activity to the child's will ; but real success on these lines
demands such a high degree of intelligence that I shall defer further
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76 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
consideration of this matter to the chapter devoted to the develop-
ment of the intellect.
III. The First Signs of Development of the Intellect
The eye, " the mirror of the soul," makes it possible for the atten-
tive observer of that marvel of creation, the newborn child, to recog-
nize the first slight stirrings of the infantile intellect (Verstand).
These stand in the service of those primitive impulses of the human
soul, hunger and love, taken in the broadest sense. Just as hunger
(demand) for food and air awakens in the child the first associative
reactions, so does the need of aflfection, and its satisfaction through
the mother, awaken the beginnings of recognition. Joyfully the
infant follows the mother's preparations to nurse him; and his
power of making fine distinctions is shown by the fact that the same
service by another person leaves him indiflferent. Before long he
knows the place which the mother takes when she oflFers him the
breast. In the same way the artificially nourished child fastens his
gaze upon the bottle as soon as it is filled with milk. That the
child becomes excited at the sight of the breast or of the bottle is
proof that an associative process comes into play. Tiedemann re-
ports^ that his little son, at the age of two months, stopped crying
as soon as he was placed in the position for nursing and his face
was touched by a soft hand. The fact that here the child was gov-
erned by an associative process of elementary form was shown by
his feeling after the breast. Observations by both Shinn and Scupin
agree in the account that they give of this early associative thought-
process.
Since for the child the evacuation of the bowels is just as pleas-
urably emphasized as is the taking in of nourishment, one must con-
clude that the former process is present to his mind as a matter of
real interest ; and indeed it is evident that thought-associations con-
nected with both processes are present very early in life. Thus,
my nephew, at the age of eleven months, to the great amusement of
the company at table, when he saw a white soup-tureen, the two
handles of which he failed to notice, evidently remembering the
night-vessel upon which he was accustomed to relieve his need,
called out joyfully "Ah-ah!** A little girl of seven months, who,
on account of constipation, was frequently given an enema, came to
associate this process very closely with a certain folded piece of
^D. Tiedemann, Beobachtungen liber die Entwicklung der Seelenfahig-
keiten beim Kinde, p. 9.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 77
Mosette-batiste (Mosettig-Batist), so that the sight of it always
brought on a severe fit of screaming and crying.
These early thought-associations (BegrifFsverkniipfungen), ccm-
nected with the taking of nourishment and the movements of the
bowels, make such a lasting impression by virtue of the emotional
tone by which they are so strongly marked, that even when appar-
ently forgotten they retain their place in the unconscious mind;
and with the growing child they are likely to find an outlet in the
seemingly unmotivated outbursts of laughter for which school chil-
dren are so often reprimanded, as if for intentional disturbances of
order.
The desire for light and air also gives ample opportunity for
definite associations, such as Preyer, Shinn, and Scupin cite in
great number. The pleasurable satisfaction of this demand, this
hunger, is expressed in shouts of joy when the child is carried to
the sunny window, or as soon as he sees preparations being made
for going out of doors.
The routine of daily life, the frequent repetition of definite acts
at the same hour of the day, prepare the way slowly for the forma-
tion in the mind of the idea of " time " ; and this takes place long
before the adult would suppose an accurate conception to be pos-
sible. In his eleventh month my nephew connected quite correctly,
after a week's experience, his leaving the garden at nine o'clock in
the morning with the meal that immediately followed, namely, with
an egg; so that as soon as that hour arrived and he was placed in
his carriage, he cried out delightedly, "Ei-Ei (egg-egg) !" In the
afternoon, on the contrary, at the sight of his little cap, he called out
" Bah-Bah ! " When his mother, in order to test his power of mak-
ing the correct distinction, offered him an egg one afternoon, the
child rejected the oflfer, just as he had turned away in the morning
from a proposed ride (Bah-Bah!). That the feeling of being
satiated had not influenced his refusal is shown by the fact that he
was accustomed to have a certain quantity of milk given him before
going out to ride.
As a second source of infantile mental activity (Geistestatig-
keit) I have indicated " love." It is a well-known and obvious fact
that the person whom the child first learns consciously to recognize
is the one who is occupied most intensively with his care, the one
who is concerned daily and hourly in providing for his needs. He
recognizes such a person from certain distinguishing signs which
through frequent repetition have made an impression on his mind.
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78 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
This act of recognition is shown, for example, in his smiling pleas-
antly on his mother, or exclaiming with joy at the sound of her
voice in another room.
The love-plays which mother and child invent create for the
latter a series of thought-associations of the greatest significance
for later childhood. Indeed, they are of significance for the whole
of life, since, as unconscious memories, they help to mould the love-
life of the adult, and serve as one of the main sources of origin of
that whole group of habits (Lebensgewohnheiten) which differen-
tiate the individual from the genus. The helplessness of the mite-
of-humanity is the condition which accounts for his exceptional
position (in the family). And before long he makes use of his
advantage ; for he has enormous need of love. Very soon he learns
that screaming and crjring bring an end to the tedium of loneliness.
And he employs these means not solely when physical discomfort
suggests the need of an affectionate attendant, but as an artifice
through which he may secure the companionship which he desires.
The first definite signs of his being attracted toward other people
come into existence along the path of his intellectual development.
Indeed that is the conditio sine qua non for it. This statement is
not out of harmony with the proposition just now advanced, that
love is one source of certain sorts of mental processes. Intellect
and feeling stand in such close relationship to each other in the
very little child, that with him each new acquisition in the one
realm brings a gain in the other. The more rapidly the intellectual
powers unfold, the more intensively does the life of feeling (Ge-
fuhlsleben) begin to stir within the child — sl mode of progress in
development (Entwicklungsgang) to which pedagogy does not
always turn proper attention. Side by side with feelings of sym-
pathy in the child, feelings of antipathy likewise become manifest.
They also prove themselves to be the outflow of the need of love ;
for they are directed primarily toward people from the hands of
whom the child has experienced pain, has met with a refusal of the
love demanded — ^love taken in its fullest meaning. For example,
the unpleasant experience of vaccination sometimes causes the child
not only to dislike the doctor who vaccinates him, but other persons
instinctively associated with him, through being of similar appear-
ance. I have known a little girl of ten months, who had been vac-
cinated two months before by a doctor wearing a handsome full
black beard, to run away screaming from her own dark-bearded
father on his entering the room after a considerable absence. My
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 79
own nephew shows an aversion toward men with black beards,
which seems to lead back to a similar experience and which has
lasted up to his fifth year. The emotional character of the original
experience was so strong that it produced illusions of recognition.
The antipathy of many children, toward cats seems likewise to de-
pend upon associations formed in very earliest childhood. My
sister transferred to cats her antipathy toward a doctor who, in
her tenth month, came, dressed in dark furs, and examined her
throat by the finger. Even when four years old she burst into
loud screaming at the unexpected sight of a cat. The doctor's gait,
a gliding one, intensified this association.
The power to "recognize" is materially aided by another in-
stinct of importance for education, namely, curiosity. The small
child wishes to see everything and hear everything. As soon as the
first fear at the sight of something which is new has been over-
come, the child finds pleasure in using all his senses in studying it.
This curiosity directs itself, in the natural course of events, to all
the measures which are adopted for the care of the child's body,
those, especially, which are associated in his mind with anticipation
of a pleasurable sort; hence, for example, the intent listening when-
ever the bath-tub is filled or emptied, an event which clearly carries
an undertone of sexual interest. Shinn, Scupin and Preyer all
tell of the marked pleasure which the gurgling of the bath-water
gave to the children under their observation. When one considers
that this form of interest occurs just at the time of the early train-
ing (Dressur) having relation to bodily needs and habits, the en-
joyment is adequately explained. The great importance which
parents and nurses attach to the excretory act does not remain un-
noticed by the child, largely because while that is taking place he quite
often earns words of praise to which his vanity is by no means in-
sensible. But since the act in itself is without meaning for the
child, and remains removed, to a considerable extent, from per-
ception through his senses, his curiosity turns naturally to the re-
sults of the act. The surprise and self-satisfaction expressed in
his face on first beholding his own " defecation products " makes it
easy to suppose that the first idea of an independent creative
power now dawns within the child's mind.
One of the very foundation-pillars of early education, indeed of
the all-around psychic development of the child, is the impulse to
imitate. It is difficult to say when this first appears. Beyond
doubt imitative acts have been observed as early as in the infant's
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80 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
seventh month. They presuppose acts of will and of comprehen-
sion (Verstandesakte). It is these that lead the child to make
those comical gestures which impress the onlooker as so irresistibly
amusing, because there comes to light in them the contrast between
the adult act, performed consciously and with a knowledge of the
goal sought, and the seemingly purposeless acts of childhood. We
see unrolled before us, as it were, in its full ludicrousness, the in-
congruity between the manifestations of mature understanding and
the activity of the infant, which is characterized by ceaseless and
automatic repetition. I have not been able to persuade myself that
the young child is conscious of the comicalness of this situation, as
some authors maintain. The child who, when scarcely a year old,
fmts on his father's hat, does this with the utmost seriousness; and
it is with the same seriousness that he distorts his face in front of
the mirror into laughable grimaces, in imitation of his elders. As
soon as he begins to laugh, even the interest in the imitation becomes
lost, in great measure. The more exact the imitation, the more it
becomes a serious occupation for the child. This is the first form
of the infantile wish to be "big," to be "grown up,** of which I
will speak later in another connection. This imitation impulse is of the
greatest importance for the intellectual development of the child.
Without that it would be impossible to teach him to speak ; and by
means of it we are able to direct the child's attention to the mani-
fold events of daily occurrence. He learns to imitate the noise of
running water, the whistling of the wind, and a hundred other
sounds. Through the same means he learns to use his toys in the
right way, and also to keep himself from injuries of various sorts.*
Nor does the affective life remain entirely uninfluenced by this imi-
tation instinct. During early life expressions of apparent sym-
pathy with other people, taking the form of laughing or cr3ring
with them, are simply acts of imitation. And such manifestations
first become " emotionally-toned,'* in a pleasurable or unpleasurable
sense, through the associations which the child has formed in other
ways. This principle is illustrated still more clearly in later child-
hood by the infectious laughter of whole classes at school.
The early imitative attempts at speech (Lallversuche) are to
be regarded as one of the earliest achievements of the infantile in-
tellect, except in so far as these attempts are solely the expressions
'A child (known to the translator), nearly four years old, burned her
face with her own play flat-iron which she heated on the stove and tested
agaiast her skin, as she had seen her grandmother do.
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MENTAL UFE OF THE CHILD 8l
of pleasure, as Stem' found them to be in the case of his little son,
Giinther, when taken out to drive, in his fourth month. As soon
as it is shown to be the manifest wish of the child to make himself
intelligible to his environment by means of simple sounds or syl-
lables, or to imitate anything spoken to him, there is present for us
an effort of the infantile intelligence. The careful consideration
of this point leads on to one of the most important chapters in our
further study of the child's mental development, that which concerns
itself with the development of speech.
IV. The Beginnings of Speech
So many excellent publications are already in existence which
occupy themselves with the speech of childhood that I shall attempt
to throw light upon the subject only where supplementation of
some special sort is needed. In none of these works is there to be
found even a hint of the tendency, on the part of early word-for-
mations, to connect themselves with the physiological arrangements,
and the organs that serve them, which are just as needful for the
further well-being of the body as are those that are concerned with
the taking in of nourishment. Stem writes,^ indeed, as follows:
"The child selects his environment and his interests from the
childish point of view (padozentrisch) . . .," and again : " The fact
that Hilda, in designating her activities (giving names to acts), also
proceeds padocentrically, is shown in her naming first of all only
such acts as she herself performs and likes to perform." Yet, in
spite of this, neither in the works of Stem, nor in those of other
investigators of child life are there to be found any comments to
indicate that sounds or syllables are chosen with reference to the
processes above mentioned. But since we have no reason to as-
sume that these processes were unattended by feelings of pleasure
to the children under observation, and therefore failed to excite
their interest ; and since there is just as little ground for believing
that the training to which they were of necessity subjected was
effected without the use of words, the only explanation of the ap-
parent abnormality of those children is that all objectionable ex-
pressions were carefully struck out — not, indeed, from the child's
speech, but from the scientific studies based on the observation of
it. For how different from these descriptions is the reality of the
nursery I My nephew's stock of words, in his twelfth month, com-
» C u. W. Stem, Die Kindersprache, p. 82.
* C u. W. Stem, 1. c, pp. 179, 180.
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82 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
prised four syllables, "Ei (egg) "—"Ah-ah!"— "Bah-bah!''—
" Na-na I *' — which corresponded to the chief interests of his young
existence; namely, to eating, digesting, sleeping and going out of
doors, and to making known his will. Why, indeed, should the
little child, who cannot be assumed to be governed by esthetic prin-
ciples, allow of his own will those visible signs of the nutrition
process (Stoffwechsels) to go unnoticed, those processes which from
the earliest days have been the cause to him of pleasure or pain,
praise or blame, according to his success and prompt compliance in
relation to them? The Scupins alone record in their diary, in
regard to their little son, that from the very beginning he exhibited
a lively interest in all the functions of his body. In showing this
interest the little fellow certainly did not differ from all children
who have been studied in the past and will be studied in the future.
To every child the act of attending to his own natural needs brings
satisfaction; and not only is this true of the act itself, but the
products of the act are likewise a source of pleasure. Whatever
occupies the child's thoughts intensively and enduringly, for that
he seeks a name; and that name, of course, is never missing in
any nursery. Perhaps the largest or earliest acquired part of the
very little child's store of sounds and words is that group which
springs from anal — ^and urethral — erotism. For spontaneous lalling
{lallen, i. e., repetition of apparently meaningless sounds), and the
earliest attempts at speech represent primarily the activity of the
infantile will in the interests of pain and pleasure ; and these expres-
sions of feeling, in their turn, are connected, to a large extent, with
the process of digestion, are bound up with it, as it were. Of
course the supreme importance of the second root of speech de-
velopment, imitation, should not be overlooked in this connection.
But here again, at this period of life, the need mainly at stake is
that of providing bodily functions with names.
In addition to this rudimentary speech (das Lallen) there comes
the entire scale of tones of tenderness with which every mother
loves to give her child pleasure, to sooth him and to put him to sleep,
tones which perhaps she unconsciously draws from vestiges of mem-
ories of her own primordial period of existence. Devoid of defi-
nite meaning as these tones apparently are, they form a language full
of love and logic, a language which constitutes a true bond between
mother and child. Perchance there lies a profound significance in
the faltering speech of the boy, who whenever he was unhappy
called for " Ma-ma," and whenever he was in a cheerful state of
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 83
mind summoned " Da-da." In every time of woe it is, indeed, the
mother who first hastens to her child, comforts him and helps him
out of trouble, while the father (in the first infant "Lallen" often
called "Da-da"), for the most part, frolics with the child and
therefore represents for him the mood of active cheerfulness. The
fact that children frequently hold fast so long to their first-year
baby talk, and, furthermore, that it tends to return in adult life in
moments when affection is felt at its highest, gives evidence of the
need of love — ^love as conceived in the very earliest childhood — ^a
need then poorly expressed in words but shown by means of ges-
tures and seemingly senseless sounds. The further fact — really
undeniable — that every experience which makes an impression upon
the child in a sensual or erotic sense also contributes to the en-
largement of his vocabulary, is imfortunately thrust aside as unim-
portant.
A special significance belongs to the child's monologues, and to
his echo-speech (Echolalie). The former, appearing as they do,
linked widi definite situations, clearly show their relationship to
the emotional life (Gefiihlsleben). Monologues are indulged in by
almost all children while they are being gently rocked in the car-
riage, or else during swinging-movements on the arm of the mother.
They have also been observed as expressions of anger and disap-
pointment. In such cases the monologue is a substitute to the child
for the expressions of love which were denied him, contrary to
his expectation — ^the principle being the same with relation to that
of the sucking-habit, as above noted; the activity of the muscles
gives him so much pleasure that he soon forgets the thing he orig-
inally desired, or, in other words, he abandons it. For my little
nephew, during the period between his seventh and thirteenth
month, certain combinations of syllables, unwearyingly repeated (a
ba ba — ba ba rrr), formed a sort of defense-reaction (Aibwehrreak-
tion) against the pressure brought on him to cease onanistic acts.
Sully fittingly characterizes the strongly accentuated feeling (Ge-
fiihlsbetonung), or emotional tone, associated with lalling: "The
child hears the self-produced sounds and they please him."* From
that moment the child continues the lalling for the pleasure which
it gives him. The germ of such a pleasure-seeking " Lallen " con-
sists in repetition of the same sound. The child thus shows that he
has arrived at the stage of echo-speech in which, in addition to
muscle-movements experienced as agreeable through their frequent
2 J. Sully, Untersuchungen uber die iCindheit; deutsch v. Stimpfl, p. 113.
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84 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
repetition, a new pleasure-producing stimulus is found in the rhythm.
At the same time the imitation-instinct is given an opportunity to
show itself. Together with these early speech acquisitions, undis-
guised tendencies to Narcissism of an infantile form are clearly
and vividly apparent. A little peasant child, Ella, who, in her
tenth month, was first stimulated to attempts at lalling, through the
well-meant attentions on the part of an elderly lady, repeated the
imitated syllables not only indefatigably, but with signs of pride
and satisfaction. The Scupin records contain similar statements
about the impression made by the echo-speech of their child upon
himself. The " arch smile " before the attempt, " the comically im-
portant mien " during the same, prove beyond doubt how intensively
the affective life is influenced by early intellectual performances
of this sort.'
V. The Development of Ethical Feelings
Long before it is possible for the infant to express his emotional
life in speech, gesture and mimicry betray to us the awakening of
feeling. In this way, quite early, the child is able to express his
likes and his dislikes. Just on account of his inability to com-
municate his thought in definite form, at this stage of life, we are
often left entirely in the dark as to why the child feels himself
drawn toward one person, while another excites in him a feeling of
antipathy. The deepest and most important reason for this prob-
ably lies in an unconscious comparison which he is impelled to in-
stitute between each new person and that first person — ^the mother,
as a rule — ^who took care of him in infancy. He seeks in them the
same sorts of devoted service, the same voice, stature, even the same
movements that he had learned to associate with her ; and the im-
pression of strangeness that forces itself upon him in the presence
of persons previously unknown inclines him to regard them as
something not only new but hostile (Neomismus). Freud has
shown, also, that the habitual choice of an object of special love,
on the part of a man, is determined by the fact of his childish
affection for his mother, by her personal characteristics; and the
same principle holds good, in the woman's love-life, with respect to
the person of her father. The peculiar place of father and mother
in the inner emotional life of the child is conditioned by the cir-
cumstances of the family life. The explanation of the striking fact
that even in children who have passed their earliest childhood far
« Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 33.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 85
away from the parents, there often develops a passionate love for
one or the other of 'them, is of a twofold sort. In the first place,
the infant never receives from stranger-attendants such a large
measure of affection as from his own parents, and so never as much
of it, when they are absent, as his own need of love would prompt
him to desire. Furthermore, the growing child feels this lack,
doubly if he sees other children of his own age unfolding and
blossoming in the love-warmth of their own family circles. There
is no contradiction, in principle, between the picture here given —
that represents the child's first impulses of affection as turning
toward his parents — ^and the Freudian conception according to
which the period of infancy is one of pure auto-erotism. For to
the child his own personality is the central point about which
there revolves everything that happens, everything that is experienced,
everything that is felt; and therefore, naturally, he directs his
young love to those persons who from the beginning devote them-
selves to his care. The selection of a love-object is effected with-
out detriment to his conception of the world as centering on him;
indeed, it is a result of this conception. But whenever the child
is given less love than his needs require, he tends instinctively to
seek compensation by turning his thoughts toward himself. The
egocentric tendency of the affective and the intellectual life (Ge-
fiihls-und-Geisteslebens) of the infant is deepened through the
over-measure of parental affection, and this egocentric impress fre-
quently appears, even in the second half of the first year, as obvious
jealousy. At eight months of age Tiedemann's little son fell into a
state of highest excitement when his mother, for a joke, placed a
strange child at her breast.^ At this stage of life the child feels
himself already so closely (intimately) connected with the mother
who serves as his source of nourishment, and yet more of pleasure,
that he will not relinquish possession of her. Perhaps it is in this
relationship that the first mental grasp of the idea of personal prop-
erty (mine and thine) takes its root. This idea is effectively in-
tensified by the question so often heard, "To whom then do you
belong? (Whose baby are you?) " Whatever the child feels as his
very own, that he will not give up without strong resistance. But,
above all, he will not voluntarily give up his mother's care and
love. With this feeling as the starting point, all the little tricks are
planned by means of which even the nursling seeks to tyrannize
over his mother and lead her to relegate her other household inter-
^ Tiedemann, 1. c, p. 24.
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86 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
ests to a secondary place. He understands how to find himself
obliged to relieve his bodily needs while the g^own folks are at
meals because people are not paying him particular attention just
then, and he wishes to compel it; also he knows how to call his
mother to him, by crying hard, as soon as she has gone to rest
at night. In all these performances there speaks out clearly the
infant's strong craving for demonstrations of affection, and like-
wise his unwillingness to allow his mother to occupy herself with
other matters, instead of devoting herself to him with her entire
heart. Even the most unsophisticated mothers understand this
perfectly well, as is shown by their frequent complaints: "The
moment I go out of the room the little rascal cries."
Not only jealousy, but also anger springs from the child's un-
satisfied demand for affectionate attention. Since he is unable to
perceive the reason why these attentions which he craves should
not be always rendered, any failure to render them implies for him
a lack of wish to do so; and to him his outbursts of rage are at
the same time a pleasurable exercise of his muscle-power. This is
shown by the fact that even after the circumstances' productive of
the anger have long since passed away, the infant may still continue
to rage and kick, until physical exhaustion sets in. Then, too, mak-
ing the body rigid — ^which is practised as early as in the tenth
month — is an expression of angry obstinacy, as well as of strong
muscle-erotism (Muskel-erotik). The Scupins report about their
little son, then in his seventh month, as follows :* " The child falls
into a similar rage if it is decided to place him in his carriage when
he wishes to be carried in arms. His whole head grows red from
anger ; he gives a hoarse cry and makes his little body stubbornly
stiflF, so that it becomes an actual impossibility to set him down.
And when, yielding to this energetic manifestation of his will, the
mother was several times moved to let the boy have his own way,
and stretch himself out if he liked, it became quickly evident that
he had taken in the full bearing of his act ; for we observed later
that when a strong desire for something came over him, he would
suddenly make his body stiflf and throw himself backward in a
wilful fashion, as if giving a sign from which he expected a defi-
nite result to follow. Even in the sixth month he practised this
same manoeuvre of making the body stiff whenever he became tired
of being alone and discovered that he was not receiving the un-
* Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 21.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 87
divided attention of those about him. The parents' report* relating
to this period describes how the expression of the boy's face
dearly revealed the changing feelings, as of anger, obstinacy, fear,
mischievousness (Mutwille), or disappointment, as the case might
be, by which he was controlled. The interpretation here given of
these movements — i. e,, the recognition of them as signs of (uncon-
scious) thinking on the infant's part — contradict's the conception of
Preyer, who does not look on them as indications of genuine
mental activity, although he does consider them as signs of oppo-
sition against being compelled to lie down (Mittel gegen gewalt-
sames Hinlegen).
When we think of the various ways in which the nursling sues
for demonstrations of affection, methods adopted as if consequen-
tially, with that end in view; when we realize how this craving
takes on the form, now of tenderness, now of jealousy, now of
anger, or again of subtlety (List) ; and how in moments of wilful-
ness the unappeased love-craving is likely to fall back, in its search
for an outlet, upon some form of erotic satisfaction ; then the great
importance of the parents' obligations — particularly those of the
mother toward her child — ^becomes clearly manifest. The proper
fulfilment of these obligations provides the foundation for the char-
acter-development of later years. When love has not been mani-
fested adequately in earliest childhood, the feeling of love often
remains deficient throughout adolescence and adult life, together
with an enduring longing for this feeling. Every loving glance,
every gentle touch which falls to the share of the infant leaves its
traces in the memory, in the form of an impression ; and all these
agreeable impressions weave themselves into a bright background
against which the light and dark tones of later life stand out in
relief. Even if the adult has no distinct memory of those first
months, it is certain, nevertheless, that they have exerted their in-
fluence upon his mental development. The impressions then made
continue to live, and send out delicate tendrils into dreams of later
life, filling them full of earliest childhood-wishes — ^those dreams
which seem to the laity altogether inexplicable and absurd. In his
work entitled "The Language of Dreams," Wilhelm Stekel has
pointed out how the so-called " nurse-dreams " reach back even into
the first year of life. I can confirm this from my own experience.
I used to have a very distressing dream which recurred again and
again up to within a brief period. It was a dream which appeared
* Scupin, Tagebuch, I, p. 18.
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88 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
to contradict the Freudian conception that a wish-fulfilment lies jat
the foundation of every dream. I dreamed, namely, that — ^now in
a park, now in a living room — I had to take charge of a young
girl who was suffering from nervous cramps. She tried to cling
to me in the most obtrusive manner. The strong excitement which
I felt on waking, combined with a depression lasting several hours
(as a result of the retained dream-picture of the child's distorted
features), seemed entirely to refute the idea of a " dream-wish-fulfil-
ment"; but a thorough self-analysis brought out that the picture
of the child was really a picture of myself. As a child of from
two to four months, I had suffered from severe convulsions
(Fraisenanf alien) as a result of which I screamed without cessa-
tion, and therefore was constantly carried around on some one-^s
arm. The surmise is admissible that those attacks were of hys-
terical nature, either wholly or in part. Through many years, one
symptom of such attacks kept fast hold upon me, namely a nervous
headache during which I used to roll up the pillow so that my head
hung over it, in exactly the same way as in former days when, ac-
cording to my parents' statement, I used to cry so hard and let my
head hang down backward over the nurse's arm. Through this
dream my subconscious self sought to be transported to the first
weeks of childhood, in the wish to obtain for myself manifestations
of affection such as it rarely falls to one's lot to experience, except
in days of severe illness, especially in childhood. Since tracing this
dream to its infantile root, my night's rest is no longer disturbed — a
clear proof of the correctness of the interpretation.
Inasmuch as the helplessness of the child in the cradle always
makes each new arrival the center of the family, the position of
being an "only child" (a position which becomes so important in
the years that follow) plays no pronounced role in infancy. The
mental development of twin children, on the other hand, exhibits
special tendencies which become evident at the very dawn of the
mental life and impart an influence which malTes itself felt through-
out all later years. To the attentive observer, the distinguishing
signs of this developmental tendency become manifest as early as
about the middle of the second half-year. The most important of
these signs, at this time, are outbreaks of trouble based on feel-
ings of jealousy. The operations of nursing and bathing afford
to one or the other of the little aspirants for success ample oppor-
tunity to protest vigorously against the showing of preference for
his mate — ^the twin-brother or twin-sister — ^and bring to naught any
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f' MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 89
apparent tendency to give the precedence. Thus I know of two
boys of whom the one always had to be carried out of the room
while the other was being bathed, since he regarded the care be-
stowed on his brother as a slight offered to himself. The same
boy would not suffer his mother to offer his brother the breast be-
fore he himself had received his own portion from his wet-nurse.
Possibly he began, after a little time, to look on the fact of not
being nursed actually by his mother as in itself a sign of lack of
love, since in other respects she bestowed just the same attentions
upon both children. With the other boy there developed toward
his brother a pure attraction, free from all jealousy — ^an attach-
ment which made even a temporary separation of the children im-
possible. On the whole, the two boys — ^now seven years old — ^have
retained the same fundamental traits of character that they showed
at first ; the one little fellow shows an appealing ( ?) affectionate-
ness, conjoined with a tendency to dependence, while the fondness
exhibited by the other is darkened by ever-increasing jealousy. In
a similar way, for the most part, the psychic development of female
twins is ailected.
Twins of different sex behave quite differently from this. With
them a pronounced erotic relationship comes into the foreground
as early as in the last months of the first year of life. I heard one
mother of two such children designate their relationship as a state
of being "actually in love" (geradezu verliebt). She had nursed
both children herself. At the time when she began to substitute
mixed food for an exclusive milk-diet, the boy was never weary of
giving his little sister something from each dish before he ate of it
himself. One child would not let himself be taken out for a ride
without the other child. From the tenth to the eleventh month the
boy's love had already put on the character of active admiration, and
the girl's affection had taken a submissive attitude — ^traits which
• later became considerably strengthened and which soon caused the
twins to go on record as " a pair of lovers."
It would be of great value for the better understanding and
management of twins, in later years, to have a written record of
their early, childhood history to refer to. Such a history would
throw much light on the tendency of such persons to show a one-
sidedness in their development, a persistent need of having some
one to depend on, a shyness and diffidence in temperament, and,
finally, on their lack of freedom where it is a question of the be-
stowal of love, on their part.
One of the earliest, purely egoistic emotions (Gemiitsbewc-
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90 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
gungen) of the child is fear. It is born of intelligence conjoined
with imagination (Phantasie). If the former confines itself, with
the infant, to the most primitive association-processes, and if the
work of the imagination is scarcely perceptible to the onlookers be-
cause of the lack of a word-language, nevertheless there must be
present in his consciousness, idea-associations and at least some
faintest trace of feeling-perceptions (Vorstellungen), before he can
have a sense of fear. It is striking that everything new seems to
excite unpleasant feelings in the infant's mind, feelings which ex-
press an instinctive apprehension (Ahnung) of possible evil. Next
to the fear of novelty (Neophobie), it is fear of the dark that is
especially characteristic of the child. But this fear hardly (noch
selten) appears in the first year ; although it is just at this age that —
in consequence of the widespread custom of allowing the infant to
share the sleeping-room of his parents — ^the foundation for the fear
is laid. This is something which I will discuss later in detail. Still
earlier than the fear of the dark appears the fear of being punished ;
it lies at the root of the sense of guilt which is so common, and sets
in in conjunction with the power of memory. The infant's tendency
to shrink in fear from the hand ready to strike him indicates, not
alone an instinctive defence, but points to very complicated thought-
processes. But the fear of punishment is not without the maso-
chistic component of pleasure (WoUustkomponent). By repeating
forbidden acts the child formally challenges punishment for the
same. The pain caused him by the blow, which as a rule is scarcely
more than a rather hard " love-pat," is frequently felt as but slight
when measured against the pleasure derived from the excitation of
the erogenous zones that are concerned, the nates and the palms of
the hands (Gesass und Handflachen) ; the more so that, as a rule,
it is only because of the severe expression of countenance and the
accompanying cross words (scolding) of the person inflicting the
punishment that the infant is able to discover that the treatment
which he has received is meant as anything but a display of tender-
ness; and it is only the recognition of this fact that releases the
crying and screaming.
VI. Dreams (Die Traume)
Since speech, the most effective means of making oneself under-
stood, IS entirely lacking to the child in the first year of life, or
else is employed merely in the form of a few sounds and words
used for designating the persons and things in his immediate en-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 9I
vironment, it is impossible to gain any really deep knowledge of his
mental life during sleep. We can only conclude from certain move-
ments and sounds (Lall-Lauten), that even at this stage of develop-
ment sleep does not pass dreamless. It would be justifiable to re-
gard the movements as reflex and nothing else, if they did not
carry in themselves quite often very clearly the character of some-
thing which is "willed." When a sleeping infant is seen to be
making well-defined movements, as if for the purpose of grasping
objects and feeling of them, and when these movements are ac-
companied by a smile or by loud laughter, by wrinkling of the fore-
head as if for crying, or by little sounds of anger — ^then it may
surely be taken for granted that the child is dreaming. When a
ten-months-old child who shows such a strong affection for the new
nurse-maid that, from her advent on, he will let no one else attend
to his bodily needs, and lets out his warning-call of "Ah-Ah!"
every day before he wakes, and then is found in a soiled ocndition ;
it is permissible to see in this performance the same mechanism that
determines the " dreams of convenience " of later childhood years.
Such an older child dreams, for instance, that the necessary prep-
arations for meeting his wants have been made; and by means of
this self-delusion the Unconscious is made to win for the child an
excuse for doing something that he is not allowed and would not
allow himself to do when he is awake,* a deed which draws punish-
ment in its wake. Just so, through dream-license, the infant de-
ceives himself as to the order of his acts in point of time, so that
he calls for help only when he has already relieved his needs. I
cannot subscribe to the objection that the child, at this early age,
has not the intelligence for drawing conclusions so complicated, and
that he is waked out of sleep simply by the feeling of being wet
and uncomfortable. When one considers how witty the most cir-
cumscribed, how imaginative the most matter-of-fact adult shows
himself at times, in dreams, one is fully justified in claiming that
thought-processes such as we have shown reason for accepting as
belonging to the infant's waking-life, are not absent in the dream,
just because it shows forbidden wishes as gratified. The wish-
fulfilment to which the dream of the adult leads — ^indeed, even that
of the older child — ^but only by way of long and winding paths, as
permitted and mapped out by the censor, appears in an undisguised
form in the case of the very little child. While having his after-
^ Namely, to pass water, etc., as ia bed-wetting. The whole sentence has
been slightly amplified. [Trans.]
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92 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
noon nap, an eleven-months-old boy who had received his first whip,
made evident movements as if snapping it and tried with lips and
tongue to imitate the clucking-sounds which he had heard from
adults under similar conditions, by giving a low " Hit-hit." A little
girl just under one year old, who on being taken to the country had
spent much of her first day in splashing in a watering-trough, re-
peated those movements during her sleep on the night following,
and laughed happily as she did so. Smacking the lips during sleep
likewise indicates obviously agreeable dream-thoughts, and probably
harks back to the pleasures of the sucking-habit. And since we
know that whip-interests point to the presence of sadistic desires
and that the great fondness of children for water points to a
strongly developed urethral erotism, it is obvious that such dreams
as those cited might, if carefully studied, prove a valuable con-
tribution to the subject of dream-interpretation. It may be, for
example, that muscle-erotism of high grade could be shown to be
perhaps the most important basis for the "stair-case dreams " which
appear as early as in the third quarter of the first year of life, as
is to be inferred from the jerk-like start of the body and from the
anxious expression of the face during sleep. Such a study would
probably make it appear certain, also, that during the stage prior
to speech, the latent dream-content is seldom without a sexual or
erotic motive ; and how, with the very little child, the dream-content
is really not concealed, but comes to light without disguise, just as
experienced and felt. The study of children's dreams would make
clear why certain dream-experiences follow us through our entire
life with such persistence (Zahigkeit) ; I refer to the dreams of
vast surfaces of water, of plunging headlong down an endless flight
of stairs, also to the exhibition-dreams in which the dreamer, lightly
dressed or not at all, shows himself in a crowd of people, to his own
painful embarrassment. These last-named dreams, indeed, reflect
accurately the wishes of small children while asleep. For the close
wrapping up to which the infant is subjected before the night
begins,^ is done for the* very purpose of preventing exposure during
sleep; it is directed especially to keeping the lower portions of the
body covered, the head and face being sufficiently protected by the
pillow.
(To be continued)
* And from which confinement he longs to free himself. [Trans.]
* Here the original text seems to have a tinge of sarcasm as indicated by
the words " keinen anderen Zweck "— " um so mehr "— " stets." [Trans.]
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CRITICAL REVIEW
THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY OF CHILD'S
DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS AND THE
DYNAMIC DIFFERENTIATION OF
THE HEAD REGION
By William A. White
"What is more real than a wish in the heart of man?"
In preparing my article, Individuality and Introversion,^ in
which I discuss the problem of individuality from the psychological
point of view I was attracted to Professor Child's discussion of the
problem of the physiological individual as set forth in a paper pub-
lished in Science.* Since the appearance of this paper I have secured
Professor Child's other works on this subject, namely his little work
Individuality in Organisms' and his larger work Senescence and Re-
juvenescence.* A careful going over of his work as set forth in
these publications has convinced me that I needed to modify my
views about the place of the psyche in development and also shown
me wherin I have expressed myself in my writings in a way that
was at least misleading. The modification of my views as hereto-
fore expressed seems to me so important and fits in so admirably
with much that has issued as a result of psychotherapeutic expe-
rience and seems also to have such a fundamental importance for
that branch of therapy that I am prompted to set them forth here.
First, of course, it is necessary to outline briefly Professor Child's
views as developed in his works cited. I will take up, for the most
part, only those matters which pertain to the subjects indicated in
the title to this article, for he discusses, especially in Senescence
and Rejuvenescence, many other issues of importance.
He sets out to discover what constitutes a living or organic in-
dividual — ^what is at the basis of its unity and the orderliness of its
1 The Psychoanalytic Review, January, 1917.
*The Basis of Physiological Individuality in Organisms, Science, April
14, 1916.
* Published in the University of Chicago Science Series.
* Published by the University of Chicago Press.
93
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94 WILLIAM A. WHITE
behavior. The structure of an individual is purely a matter of
anatomy, it is the orderly integration of the structural elements which
remains to be accounted for. In other words it is not the static but
the dynamic individual that needs defining. After a review of the
several theories he discards them all, even the more recent physico-
chemical theories which see in chemical transportation the funda-
mental element in physiological correlation. While chemical corre-
lation is without doubt a factor it is only possible in an already exist-
ing individual in which some sort of order already exists. Any ade-
quate theory of the individual must therefore be dynamic and deal
with processes rather than with structures. Contrary to the assump-
tion of biologists who believed that physiological individuality was
inherent in protoplasm and dependent upon a self-determined or-
ganization he sees physiological individuality as a function of the
relation between protoplasm and its environment.
The nature of the integrating factor of relationship he arrives
at by assuming first a bit of undifferentiated protoplasm. Now let
a difference at some point in the environment act as a stimulus at a
given point at the surface of this protoplasm. The immediate result
is an increase in activity at this point, which dynamic effect is not
limited to the point of contact but tends to spread in ever widening
waves of decreased energy much like the waves which result when
a stone is thrown into a quiet pond.
As the wave of activity spreads it successively acts as stimulus
so that the wave represents the spread of the increased activity orig-
inally set in operation by the stimulus from the environment. As it
spreads, too, there is a constant decrement in its effectiveness, so
that a dynamic gradient is established, the point of greatest intensity
or highest rate of activity being the point of incidence of the original
stimulus. A passing stimulus produces only a passing gradient,
while a long continued, or often repeated, or very strong stimulus,
or all combined, tends in proportion to these several qualities, to
establish permanent changes in the protoplasm along the path of the
increased activity. The dynamic gradient tends to become persistent
and consists fimdamentally in a change in reactivity, irritability of
the protoplasm. Finally this dynamic, or irritability or metabolic
gradient, as it really is because here tissue changes go on most
rapidly, becomes the starting point of a permanent quantitative order
in the protoplasm or a physiological axis of the simplest form of
individual. This first order to arise is the chief, polar, or major
axis, while similar orders developed later determine minor axes and
on the basis of these is established the symmetry of the individual.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILD's DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS 95
This matter of symmetry has been largely discussed in the past.
Spencer in his Principles of Biology** has devoted a great deal of
space to it and concluded that it was a fimction of the relation of
the animal or plant to its environment. For example, an animal
moving through water will, by that very fact, expose its forward end
to the operation of forces quite different from those to which the
other end is exposed and so it tends to become different. Thus b^ns
a polar differentiation which results, other things remaining equal, in
radial symmetry. Now if one surface is always uppermost and the
other lowermost a further differentiation will ensue resulting in a
bilateral symmetry. This is precisely the state of affairs and the
result which Qiild sees when he points out the results of a stimulus
applied to an undifferentiated bit of protoplasm. There results what
he calls a dynamic gradient which gradient if maintained ultimately
becomes one of the axes of the individual, all of which are arranged
in various degrees of subordination to the major axis. It is such
an arrangement about a major axis which is the fundamental fact
of the physiological individual, according to Child, a conclusion
reminiscent of Spencer's, who considered the individual as "any
center or axis that is independently carrying on that continuous ad-
justment of inner to outer relations which constitutes life."*
The methods of experimentation which Child used will be only
briefly mentioned. They are significant for the purposes of this
paper because they serve to write large the stated conclusions and
to make their fundamental soundness more evident.
The experimental work was done for the most part with fresh-
water planarians, particularly the Planaria dorotocephala, P. macu-
lata, and the P. velata. The experimental animals were subjected
to immersion in solutions of various strengths of potassium cyanide.
If the solution is strong enough to kill without acclimation but still
not so strong but that the differences in susceptibility may appear
clearly, it will be fotmd that death begins at the head and proceeds
posteriorly and that the lateral margins die before the median r^on,
thus proceeding along the axial (metabolic) gradients; and as be-
tween different groups of worms disintegration begins earlier and
proceeds more rapidly in the younger than in the older worms, that
is, in the worms having the highest rate of metabolism. The sus-
ceptibility rate therefore varies directly as the metabolic rate.
»VoLII.
• Principles of Biology, VoL I.
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96 WILLIAM A. WHITE
If a concentration of cyanide is used which does not kill the
animals directly but permits of a certain degree of acclimation it
will be noted that the relation between the survival time and rate of
metabolism is the oj^site of that when the solution kills. Under
these circumstances the younger animals, that is, those with the
higher rate of metabolism, live the longer, while it is the older who
die first. Here again degree of susceptibility corresponds to rate of
metabolism.
Such is the nature of the experimental work which demonstrates
the existence of a dynamic gradient and which thus refutes the
hypothesis that the unity and the order in an organism is dependent
upon the transportation of substances, in other words, consists in
chemical correlations. Rather the correlation is d)mamic and dom-
inance is dependent upon transmitted change or excitation from the
region of highest metabolic rate — ^the head region. The nature and
the accumulation of substances in the different parts of the body
are, therefore, not dependent upon their transportation, but upon
their relative stability in relation to the metabolic rate of the par-
ticular part. In general only the most stable substances can accumu-
late in regions of high metabolic rate, while substances of less sta-
bility may exist where the rate is lower so that each level, so to
speak, of the gradient comes to be characterized by certain sub-
stances, and qualitative differences in the different parts of the
gradient arise, characterized by specific substances. As Child well
says, chemical transportation cannot accotmt for the origin of the
individual, because some sort of an individual, as such, must exist,
having some sort of orderly relation between its parts, before chem-
ical correlation between those parts can take place. From this point
of view, therefore, hormones which have sprung into such prom-
inence in the last few years become of secondary importance rela-
tively to the nervous system, which in its relation to other parts is
"the final expression of relation which is the foimdation and start-
ing j>oint of organic individuation."^
I have already pointed out how and why an animal tends to de-
velop differences in the different parts of the body because of, and
dependent upon, the different relation of these parts to the environ-
ment. How, for example, a uniform bit of protoplasm by the mere
fact of its movement through water would develop a difference in
the extremity which came first and most intensively in contact with
the environment — ^the head end. To put it differently — 3l mass of
7 Individuality in Organisms, p. 48.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILD'S DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS 97
protoplasm without an axis becomes the recipient of a stimulus.
The first result of such a stimulus® would be an increase in the meta-
bolic rate at the point stimulated and this change in rate would tend
to radiate from that point like the waves on a pond from the point
where a stone has been thrown in. Immediately the bit of proto-
plasm has an axis, the important characteristic of which is that the
metabolic rate is highest at the point of the application of the stim-
ulus and tends to decrease in direct proportion to the distance there-
from. The limit of eflFectiveness of the transmission varies in ac-
cordance with the strength of the stimulus and the nature of the
transmitting material (protoplasm). The bearing of this matter of
the eflFectiveness of transmission, or rather the distance of transmis-
sion, upon reproduction is very well shown in the case of the P/a-
naria dorotocephala? This flatworm undergoes from time to time
a species of agamic reproduction by fission. The rear end of the
body (posterior zooid) fails to be controlled by the anterior end,
attaches itself to the ground as the worm crawls forward, and holds
fast while the forward end tries to go ahead. The substance be-
tween gets thinner and thinner and finally breaks. The posterior
zooid, now separated from the control of the anterior end, proceeds
to develop a head of its own and to become a complete worm.
To revert to the transmission of enei^ from the point of stim-
ulation. If the same character of stimulus is repeatedly applied to
the same portion of the animal; if, for example, the animal keeps
thrusting the same part of its body forward into the environment,
then the protoplasm along the lines of the transmission of energy
from the stimulus will tend to organize into a chemico-physical equi-
librium with the rate of energy change. In other words substances
will tend to accumulate at the diflFerent levels of the gradient which
are in dynamic equilibrium with the energy transmission at those
levels — ^the gradient becomes organized.
Not only is the principle of the organization of the gradient
visible in the processes briefly outlined in this illustration, but an-
other principle of as great importance comes out with equal clear-
ness, namely that structure is organized function, or, as Bergson
would perhaps put it, structure is the organization of the past, or,
organization is the structuralization of fimction or of the past. From
this point of view the nervous system, as a structuralized dynamic
gradient or as an organized system of relations between the parts of
the organism, is given a new meaning.
s Individuality in Organisms, p. 30 et seq.
• Senescence and Rejuvenescence, Ch. VI.
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98 WILLIAM A. WHITE
Now of course, as Child has very well shown in the simpler or-
ganisms, an individual has many g^dients. Among the simpler in-
dividuals these are expressed in the various axes of symmetry.
Among the higher animals each organ would have a dominant gra-
dient of its own and probably many subordinate ones, while the total
interplay of forces in the individual can be visualized as playing
along the axes of these multitudinous gradients, now reinforcing,
now inhibiting, according as their energy rate is mutually assimilable
*or not, all of this great number of gradients held in an orderly or-
ganization because of mutual relations of dominance and dependence
and all in the last analysis under the final domination of the gradient
of highest metabolic rate, which in turn is dominated by its r^on of
highest metabolic rate — ^the head end.
From this presentation it is easy to see how erroneous is the or-
dinary way of thinking of the dominance of the head end of the
body. It is quite usual to conceive of the psyche, for example, as if
it were a concrete entity which made its entrance upon the stage at
some particular point in evolution — ^the only question is just when?
Many people say that an animal cannot reason, has no soul (psyche),
or even that children have no souls or are only little animals, while
in the Orient, as is well known, woman is supposed to be without a
soul. Aside from these rather crude ideas, however, there seems
to be a wide feeling that evolution has taken place, so to speak, by
a series of superpositions and that finally a head and then a psyche
were added (evolved). From my presentation thus far it will be
seen how far this is from the truth. There never was an organism,
no matter how simple, how far down the line of evolution, but had
a head end. The organism did not first develop as a group of organs
and then develop a centralized control and coordination of those
organs, but the development of the centralized control and coor-
dination went along with the development of the organs. A mo-
ment's consideration will serve to convince one that this must have
been so, inasmuch as the function of the various organs is in large
part to serve the organism as a whole. No such service could be
rendered without organization, and centralized authority is the basis
of organization. The history of the head end, the head, the psyche,
then reaches as far back as the history of life itself, in fact is co-
terminous with that of life. All the forces which have been operating
to produce the developed organism have also been operative in pro-
ducing the developed head control.
The bearing of this formulation upon the whole problem of
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SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILD*S DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS 99
psychotherapy is evident, particularly if considered from the point
of view of organ inferiority as set forth by Adler. Adler traces the
symptoms of the psychonenroses to their foimdation in ah inferior
organ. The inferior organ produces in the individual a feeling of
insecurity and causes him to develop those dexterities, he calls them,
which help to overcome that feeling. The individual, therefore, in-
stead of being free to deal with reality, develops a fictitious goal,
the goal of safety, and the symptoms of the neuroses may be de-
scribed and imderstood as a flight to safety.
The dexterities which the neurotic develops to overcome his
feeling of inferiority are essentially psychological in origin so that
the organ inferiority is discounted, so to speak, by the compensatory
overvaluation of its psychomotor superstructure.
Here then is the rational basis for psychotherapy from the Ad-
lerian viewpoint. The compensatory mechanisms being essentially
psychic, the therapeutic approach is naturally from this angle. It
may be noted in passing, however, that Adler practically limits his
psychotherapeutic attack to psychoneurotic types of illness.
From the point of view of dynamic gradients as developed by
Child, however, the problem of psychotherapy assumes somewhat
different aspects. Adler's psychology, based upon his study of in-
ferior organs, fails just as does the psychology which I have crit-
icized, in assuming, by implication, at least, that the psyche is some-
thing which has been superposed upon the body in the last stages of
evolution. For example, he details the effects of an inferior organ
upon the psyche, as if soma and psyche were two different things,
as if they were not simply different aspects of the same biological
unity — ^the individual — and had been from the beginning.
From Child's point of view the main d)mamic gradient — ^the
central nervous axis — is the structuralized evidence of the degree of
correlation of the several organs and to the degree that the body
is under the control of the head end of this gradient the organ is
inferior rather because of failure to coordinate, that is, failure of
the dynamic gradient to control, than because of any inherent defect
in the organ as such. From this point of view the importance of
the head end receives a new interpretation apd a much deeper sig-
nificance. Failure to keep in touch with the center of control leads
to disintegration of the individual, either in the direction of repro-
duction, as already illustrated, or in the direction of some definitely
pathological process, well illustrated by the phenomena of tumor
formation. Then too, the possibilities of psychotherapy, it would
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100 WILLIAM A. WHITE
seem, are vastly greater, no longer limited to the restricted territory
of the psychoneuroses, but presenting possibilities in the realm of
the recognized organic conditions. This latter is quite in harmony
with actual accomplishments of psychoanalysis and with the best
thought which is developing in the field of internal medicine. For
example, one hears on every hand of the influence of " nervousness "
in all sorts of illnesses. Many diseases today are recognized by the
respective specialists to depend, in no small measiu*e, upon "nerv-
ous" causes, in which, a generation ago, no such etiology would
have been thought of. It remains for psychoanalysis to work out
the practical psychological mechanisms that are involved in these
cases. No one who has had experience can doubt but that the pos-
sibilities for the future loom large.
In bringing this presentation to a close there is just one corre-
lation to which I will call attention, because it seems to me to afford
such an illuminating and helpful illustration of the nature of many
at least of our psychoanalytic problems.
Child is not altogether willing to admit with Lillie, Loeb, Driesch,
Schultz and others that development in animals is a reversible proc-
ess. Inasmuch, however, as the complexities which have been built
up by the process of differentiation may be disintegrated by the
process that he calls dedifferentiation, he believes the process of de-
velopment is regressible. Differentiation is progression, and dedif-
ferentiation regression, but perhaps through stages very different
from the stages of progression, therefore the term regressible is
preferable to reversible.
Differentiation is the process of growth, specialization, morpho-
genesis and leads to senescence and death, while the process of de-
differentiation is accompanied by physiological rejuvenescence. In
other words, the process of growth, differentiation, specialization, or
better the accumulation of function as structure, the structuraliza-
tion of function, is accompanied by a gradual slowing down of
activity, of the metabolic rate. This is well shown in the planarian
worms. Starvation brings about a dedifferentiation in old worms.
Now when these worms are fed again they show by all tests that
they have become younger. In the same way Child shows by many
examples that organic reproduction is preceded by dedifferentiation.
For example, the formation of so-called adventitious buds may take
place in Begonia from the epithelial cells of the leaf. The epithelial
cells are highly differentiated, but before the buds are formed they
lose their differentiated characters and resume an embryonic con-
dition — they dedifferentiate.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILD'S DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS lOI
In analyzing the process of reconstitution in Planaria dorota-
cephala Child found that a whole series of animals could be experi-
mentally produced from pieces which presented at one extreme a
normal head and at the other extreme were headless. Experiment
proved that the head-frequency was dependent upon different de-
grees of retardation or inhibition of the metabolic rate. By im-
mersing the pieces in weak solutions of cyanides and narcotics the
head-frequency could be accurately reduced in proportion to the
strength of the solution. It was proven, too, that a head developed
at the end of the piece which in the original worm was nearest the
head (apical) and that the amoimt of dedifferentiation was greater
for the production of a head than when a head was not produced.
Many other equally interesting points were brought out. Such ex-
periments confirmed by many others show again that the head end
is the place of highest rate of metabolic change and therefore is not
only the controlling factor in the organization, but the most mod-
ifiable, a conclusion which seems to be of the greatest significance
for psychotherapy.
Of special interest for psychotherapy, aside from the proof of
the supreme importance of the head end, is the phenomenon of de-
differentiation. This phenomenon is what we are actually dealing
with all the time in our efforts to reconstruct our patients. The en-
ergy botmd up in bad habits of thinking and feeling cannot be used
for constructive ends tmtil those habits are first destroyed, thus re-
leasing the energy so that it can be used for a new structure. This
is precisely the phenomenon of dedifferentiation. We cannot build
a new house from the bricks of an old one without first tearing down
the old structure so as to render the bricks available.
And finally, Oiild's work emphasizes in a way that seems to me
most pertinent to present-day issues, the supremacy of the head end.
This supremacy is naturally of the first importance to the funda-
mental issues of a scientifically groimded psychotherapy. This
branch of therapeutics need no longer be arbitrarily limited to deal-
ing with certain so-called f tmctional disturbances of obvious psycho-
logical origrin. It is apparent that no such limitation of its activities
can any longer be demanded. The extent to which what are now
believed to be organic conditions can be influenced through the psyche
remains to be worked out in actual situations. Such work must no
longer be prevented because of the prejudices of preconceived opin-
ions without adequate facts to base them upon.
As I have already indicated, the extent to which the various
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102 WILLIAM A. WHITE
medical specialists are going in giving credence to " nervous " causes
as of importance in their several domains is encouraging and would
have been unbelievable a generation ago. Such causes are now well
recognized in a large number of gastro-intestinal conditions and
are being dimly perceived as of importance in certain cardiac and
renal disorders. I have elsewhere indicated^® how the metabolism
of organs might be disturbed by psychic causes and a number of
authors have made similar observations in other fields. A clearer
tmderstanding of the possibilities will ensue when the physiology of
the internal secretions and the vegetative nervous system shall have
been better worked out, on the one hand, and, on the other, when
there shall be a better understanding of the nature and meaning of
the unconscious. With the knowledge from these two main sources
it will be possible to work towards defining the extent to which the
head control may be utilized and the degree of modifiability, dedif-
ferentiation, which may safely be brought about, because as we
ascend the scale of animal evolution the degree of dedifferentiation
consistent with life becomes progressively less. I am convinced that
the possibilities of psychotherapy are on the verge of a material
enlargement. We are very close to a perception of the truth of the
query with which I headed this paper —
" What is more real than a wish in the heart of man ? "
The wish bids fair to become the imit of the new dynamic psychol-
ogy, thus replacing the sensation, which has held sway too long as a
unit."
The wish is the psychological aspect of the set of the whole in-
tegrated individual, it gives final expression to the trend, the tend-
ency which seeks to express itself in action^* along some certain
line. When we come to realize the multitudinous components,
physico-chemical, neuro-muscular, visceral, psychic, the integration
of which the wish is the final expression, we will be in a position to
glimpse the possibilities of a scientific psychotherapy, for we will
then realize that what we call disease is not an evil which invades
the body from without, but is itself, in what we call its organic
manifestations, structuralized function. We will then realize that
10 White, W. A., Mechanisms of Character Formation. Published by
Macmillan and Company.
" Holt, E. B., The Freudian Wish. PubUshed by Henry Holt & Co.,
New York, 1915.
1* White, W. A., The Mechanism of Transference, The PsYCHOiiNALYnc
Review, October, 1917.
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SIGNIFICANCE OF CHILD'S DEVELOPMENTAL GRADIENTS IO3
the causes of diseases are, as often as not, within, and that destruc-
tive emotions, hate, anxiety, fear, may so persistently invade and
dominate the organism that their reactions may come to be laid down
in its structure.
It was De Bay who said that it was the plant that made cells and
not the cells that made the plant.^* This expresses well the con-
cept of Child. We are constructed of organs. Organs do not g^ow
independently any more than plant cells and then become integrated
into an organism. They rather represent the structuralized fimc-
tions of the organism. In the same way why can we not have
structuralized fear, structuralized hate, structuralized anxiety, struc-
turalized greed, etc
It is not my object in this paper to dwell upon the possibilities,
but only to point out the very great importance for psychotherapy if
this viewpoint in biology should prevail. The study of mental dis-
orders would then easily become the most important branch of
medicine.
!• Cited by Thompson, D. W., Magnalia Naturae ; or the Greater Problems
of Biology, Science, October 6, 1911.
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ABSTRACTS
Jahrbuch fiir psychoanalytische und psychopatfaologische
Forschungen
Abstracted by Leonard Blumgast, M.D.
OF NEW YORK
(Vol. II, Part Two)
1. Contributions to Psychology of Love; Concerning a Special Type of
Object Choice in Man. Sigm. Freud.
2. The Theories of Organ Inferiority and of Bi-Sexuality in Their
Relation to the Neuroses. Gaston Rosenstein.
3. Concerning Urethral-Erotism. Dr. J. Sadger.
4. The Analysis of Egmont's Dream. Dr. Phil. Alfred Robitsek.
5. A Dream That Explains Itself. Otto Rank.
6. Fantasy and Fable. Herbert Silberer.
7. The Psychoanalysis of Freud. Prof. Bleuler.
8. Report of the Second Private Psychoanalytical Conference in Nurem-
berg on March 30 and 31, 1910. Otto Rank.
9. Concerning Criticism of Psychoanalysis. Dr. C G. Jung.
I. Contributions to Psychology of Love. — In the past we have allowed
poets to show us under what conditions humanity makes its love-choice,
and how it coordinates its desires with reality. It is true poets have
certain characteristics which fit them for this problem, preeminently,
their fine sensibilities for the apperception of hidden motives. They
also possess courage to let their unconscious speak, however the value
of their product is diminished by the fact that poets are constrained to
produce certain intellectually and esthetically pleasant emotions. They,
therefore, cannot reproduce the material which they have obtained from
reality without a change, but must isolate portions of it, remove certain
disturbing factors and tone down the whole. These are the privileges
of the so-called poetic license. As a result, it becomes necessary for
science with very much rougher hands and at the sacrifice of much of
the esthetic result to work with the same material. Thus, Freud justi-
fies the strictly scientific attitude which he desires to introduce into a
consideration of the love-life of human beings ; for he says : " Science
is the most complete deliverance from the pleasure principle of which
our psychic work is capable." During the psychanalytic treatment of
neurotics one often has an opporttmity to gain an insight into their
104
* »
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ABSTRACTS IO5
love-life and one realizes that their 'behavior differs very slightly from
those whom one considers normal and healthy, or even from the be-
havior of famous men. As a result of his impressions gained from a
large number of cases, the latter tend to fall into definite types. His
object here is to discuss one of these types for whom the conditions of
falling in love is strange, in fact repellant, but which at the same time
is capable of a very simple psychanalytic explanation.
I. The first of these conditions he characterizes as almost specific,
for as soon as one finds this condition one can look for the other char-
acteristics of this group. This condition could be called that of the
" damaged third." Its content is that the man never chooses a woman
as a love object, who is free — in other words, the girl or woman who is
unappropriated — but only a woman upon whom some other man, as
husband, fiance, or friend, has a possessive right TJiis condition is in
some cases so necessary that the same woman who was previously
overlooked or even repulsed, while detached, immediately became the
object of love when she fulfilled the above-named requirement.
II. The second condition is less constant but just as striking. An
individual can only be included as one of this type if the two conditions
are present. For at times the first condition occurs without the second.
The second condition is that the virgin or woman who is free from
suspicion never exerts the charm which makes of her a love object, but
those women who are suspected and in whose fidelity and trustworthi-
ness a doubt may enter can become objects of their love. This charac-
teristic can vary in degree from the slightest suspicion attached to the
flirtatious woman, to the publicly acknowledged polygamous life of the
demi-monde. He calls this condition prostitute love. Just as the first
condition gives an opportunity for satisfying the feelings of enmity
against the man from whom this type desires to tear away the loved
object, thus in the same way the second condition, that of the prostitu-
tion of the woman, gives an opportunity for feelings of jealousy, which
seems to be a necessity for this type of man. It is only when their
jealousy is aroused that their passion reaches its height and the woman
becomes an object of value. This type never misses an occurrence
which can inflame this feeling within them. One remarkable fact is
that jealousy is never directed against the rightful possessor of the
loved one but to the stranger with whom one can bring the loved one in
suspicion. In marked cases of this type the man has no desire to
possess the woman alone and slips quite comfortably into the " triangle."
One of Freud's patients who had suffered terribly as a result of the
faithlessness of his beloved did not resent her marriage, in fact he
facilitated it by every means in his power and for many years he did
not evince a trace of jealousy for her husband.
Freud next portrays the behavior of the man towards the object of
his choice. In the love-life of the normal individual the value of a
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I06 ABSTRACTS
woman is determined, in part, by her sexual integrity and is corre-
spondingly diminished in proportion as she approaches the prostitute.
It appears, therefore, a great deviation from the normal that the men of
this group consider women of the latter character as most valuable.
Their relations to these women are pursued with an expenditure of
psychic energy which may reach a point ranging above all other inter-
ests; they are the only persons whom they can love; they demand that
the woman be true to them and renew this demand no matter how
often it is broken in reality. This phase of the relations has stamped
upon it its compulsive character, which, of course, in every case of love
reaches a certain degree. One cannot, 'however, expect, on a basis of
the intensity and fidelity of such bonds, that only a single such affair
takes place in the life of the individual. On the contrary, such affairs
of passion with the same peculiarities recur in the life of individuals
belonging to this type. In fact, depending upon the change in their
environment, such affairs can be repeated indefinitely.
The most astonishing factor in men of this type is their desire to
redeem the woman; the man is convinced that the loved one needs him;
that without him she would lose every moral hold upon herself, and
would sink to the lowest possible level. He redeems her always by not
deserting her. In certain cases, the man justifies his motives and
actions by the sexual infidelity or the social position of the loved object ;
but even where such conditions are not present, this tendency is also
manifest. One man of this type who had seduced the object of his
love in the most artful manner did not deprive himself of the pleasure
of attempting her redemption after the liaison had commenced, by send-
ing her tracts on virtue.
When one considers the various characteristics of the type here dis-
cussed; the necessity that the loved one should be bound to some one
else and that she should have some of the characteristics of the prosti-
tute; the high value they place on these; their need for jealousy; their
faithfulness, which at the same time is not inconsistent with a number
of such affairs; their tendency to redeem the loved object, one cannot
see how all these can possibly be the result of one cause. But a psycho-
analytic investigation into the history of such people shows that this
peculiarity of their choice of a love object and their relations to it have
the same psychic origin as the love-life of the normal individual. They
arise from the infantile fixation on the tenderness of the mother and
represent one of the possible results of such a fixation.
In the normal love-life we have but few traits which beyond doubt
betray the maternal prototype of our object choice; for instance, the
preference of younger men for older women which occurs when the
libido has been separated from the mother too rapidly. In this type,
however, the libido with the advent of puberty remains too long a time
fixed on the mother, so that loved objects subsequently chosen retain
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ABSTRACTS IO7
the characteristics of the mother and all loved objects are plainly seen to
be substitutes for her. Freud here draws the comparison with the head
of a child whose mother has had a long labor; the shape of the child's
head for some time after birth retains the character of the maternal
birth canal.
Freud then goes on to prove that the characteristic marks of this
type: namely, the conditions under which love can take place and the
relations between the lovers, are a derivation of the maternal constella-
tion. This is easiest for the first condition — ^that of the lack of free-
dom of the woman, or the condition of the "damaged third." It is
plain that the child in growing up must realize that the mother belongs
to the father, and that this condition of bondage becomes inseparable
from the concept "mother." The "damaged third" is always, there-
fore, the father. We likewise see that the hyper-valuation of the loved
one, that she is the only one, the irreplaceable one, belongs to the infan-
tile concept; for no one has this characteristic more than the mother,
and one's relation to her rests on an unquestionable basis and on a con-
dition which cannot be repeated.
If the objects of the love of this type of man are a substitute for the
mother, the habit of turning from one woman to another which seems
so to contradict his desire for fidelity becomes clear ; for psychoanalysis
has shown through other examples that the irreplaceable in the uncon-
scious often manifests itself in the conscious as a succession of similar
and unending actions, because every substitute does not achieve the
desired satisfaction. In a similar way he explains the irrepressible
questions of children at certain ages, on a basis that they cannot ask the
one question which they would most like to ask. The loquacity of certain
neurotic persons is also due to the fact that they have in their uncon-
scious a secret which craves expression, but which, in spite of that
desire, never comes into the light of day.
On the other hand, the second condition of their loving, that of the
prostituted character of the chosen object, seems to be in direct oppo-
sition to the theory that it is derived from the mother complex. To the
conscious thinking of an adult the mother appears as one of irreproach-
able purity, and nothing shocks us more than a doubt concerning this
virtue of the mother. It is precisely this relationship of the extreme
opposites, that of mother and prostitute, which stimulated Freud to
investigate the evolution and the relation in the unconscious of these
two complexes, especially as he believed that in the unconscious there
often exists a single concept which in the conscious mind is split into
two opposites. Such an investigation led him back to that period of
a bo/s youth when he first learns of the sexual relationship between
adults, probably the pre-adolescent years. The boy is given brutal
information concerning the secrets of the sexual life with its tendency
to disgust him and at the same time to destroy the authority of the
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adult. That which influences and moves the boy deeply is the applica-
tion of these new found facts to his own parents, and often the boy
responds with the following words: ''It is possible that your parents
and other people do such things, but it is simply impossible that mine
should-"
A frequent corollary of this information is the knowledge that there
exist certain women who make of sexual intercourse a means of liveli-
hood and, because of their depravity, are imiversally despised. He
himself does not share this aversion. On the contrary, there arises in
him for these unfortunate women a mixture of desire and horror, when
he finds that we can be introduced to sexual experience through them,
an experience which formerly was the exclusive right of grown-ups.
The time then comes when he can no longer retain his doubt that his
parents do not belong to the usual people who do these hateful things,
and he says, therefore, with cynical correctness, that the difference be-
tween his mother and the prostitute is not so great, since basically they
do the same thing. This illuminating information, Freud thinks, re-
animates memories of his early infantile impressions and wishes and
stirs up certain latent or dormant instincts within him to activity. He
begins unconsciously to desire the mother in this new way and con-
siders the father as his rival ; he begins to hate him anew, and passes,
as we say, under the domination of the CEdipus complex. He does not
forget it but looks upon it as an infidelity that she does not give him the
right of sexual intercourse, but concedes it to the father. These im-
pulses, if they are not quickly put aside, can have no other outlet except
in fantasy; these fantasies all have as their content the most manifold
of sexual relations with the mother; and in these fantasies the tension
often leads the boy to masturbatory acts. As the result of the constant
interplay of the two driving motives, desire and revenge, the fantasies
of the mother's infidelity are the most frequent; the lover with whom
the mother is unfaithful almost a]wa3rs is stamped with the character-
istics of the dreamer's ego — ^more properly speaking, of an idealized ego
which has grown to the same level as the father. Freud thinks that
this view of the development of some personalities makes dear that the
contradictory and incomprehensible condition of the prostitute-like char-
acter necessary for their loved object is derived from the mother com-
plex. This type of masculine love-life shows experiences in itself of
this evolution, and is explicable only as a fixation of the adolescent
fantasies of the boy, which later in life have found their satisfaction in
reality.
These fantasies, in their attempt to realize themselves in active life,
seem only to have a loose and superficial connection with the tendency
to redeem the loved one. The loved one exposes herself to danger
through her inclination to infidelity. It is therefore understandable
that the lover attempts to shield her by guarding her virtue and counter-
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ABSTRACTS IO9
acting her evil tendencies. But the study of their "cover-memories,"
fantasies, and night dreams, shows that we have here a beautiful bit of
rationalization of an unconscious motive. In reality, the redemption
motive has its own significance and is an independent derivative of the
mother or better parent complex. When the child learns that it owes
its life to its parents, that the mother has given him his life, there
arise in him tendencies conjointly tender and grandiose which have as
their object the establishment of his independence, and give rise to the
wish to compensate the parents for this gift by giving them something
of equal value. Very often this takes the form of a fantasy to save the
father from some position of jeopardy, and Freud thinks that in this
fantasy there is often substituted for the father the kaiser or king, and
as sudi it enters into consciousness and is acted upon. The grandiose
aspect of this tendency is manifested more often to the father, its
tender aspect towards the mother. The mother has given the child life,
and it is not an easy thing to return something of equal value for this
priceless gift.
With very little change in the significance of an idea, which is very
much easier in the unconscious, the rescue of the mother takes on the
significance of giving her, or of conceiving a child with her — ^naturally
a child similar to one's self. Freud then shows that this change in con-
ception from the original idea of rescue is not too great and is not
forced, by explaining it as follows : If the mother has given one's life to
one, therefore what one gives her is another which shall have the
greatest possible similarity to one's self. The son shows his gratitude
by wishing to have a son through his mother who is like himself; in
other words, in the rescue fantasy he identifies himself with the father.
In this way all instincts, the tender, the grateful, the lustful, the insub-
ordinate, at once achieve their realization through the satisfaction of
one's wish to be his own father. Even the element of danger is re-
served in this change, the act of birth being the danger from which one
is rescued by the labor of the mother; for birth is the very first danger
in life and it is the prototype of all subsequent events from which we
feel fear. Experience of being born, Freud thinks, probably has left
us with that affect which we call fear. He cites Macduff, who, accord-
ing to a Scottish myth, was delivered by Caesarian section, and for that
reason was fearless. Freud closes the article by asserting that his
method of setting up types needs no justification, since he has picked
out the extreme and sharply circumscribed types in order to found
them« The greater majority of individuals show various fantasies of
these types, some even in blurred form, and he thinks it is clear that
only by first taking up the marked examples of a class can one get an
understanding of the isolated fantasies in individuals.
2. Theories of Organ Inferiority and of Bi-Sexuality in their Rela-
tion to the Neuroses, — ^The manifold results of the psychoanalytic re-
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searches of Freud and his pupils in the understanding of the normal and
diseased psyche have been so important, especially for the therapy of
the neuroses, that the general question of disposition to an abnormal
psychic condition was left somewhere in the background. The blame
for this is probably due to the hazy and confused concepts that have
obtained concerning psychopathic degeneration and constitutional weak-
nesses of the nervous system which were used to explain all nervous
and psychic diseases.
Freud's etiology of the neuroses, based upon the conflict between
the sexual instincts and the repressing tendencies of the ego, marks a
great advance. At the same time, a great reaction was produced
against the former theories of hereditary influences which had a static
influence on the therapy of these conditions. Since that time, however,
there have been two attempts to get a better understanding of the
organic causes of the neuroses, one by Adler and the other by Fliess.
Both these approach the problem from different aspects; both desire
different results but still travel in parallel lines. It is most interesting
that the observations which have been made in these two investigations,
first the universal bi-sexuality of everything organic, and secondly,
organic inferiority as a foundation of a number of the manifestations
of life, have that in common which allows them to be placed in a bio-
logic whole. Fliess starts from the premise of the bi-sexual disposition
of every human being. He shows that the changes in this primary
disposition towards the one or the other sex, when not complete, give
rise to variations in the degree of sexual development This lack of
development he calls degeneration. In fact, he sees in degeneration a
derangement of the masculine and feminine qualities. Fliess ascribes to
beings of this "middle kingdom" a number of diseases such as diabetes,
hernia, gout, hemorrhoids, even tuberculosis of the lungs and appendi-
citis, which he registers as an empiric fact, but not as an etiological
factor.
On the other hand, Adler has attempted to formulate human pa-
thology. The same diseases which Fliess ascribes to the "middle
kingdom" receive a new explanation on the basis of Adler's study of
organ inferiority. The etiology here is a congenital inferiority of
single or several organs which is hereditary and is the result of fetal
lack of development. Furthermore, this lack of fetal development is
the result of damage to the germ cell as the result of syphilis or of other
toxic agents to the parents at the time of conception. The disease is the
manifestation or can be called the result of the conflict between the in-
ferior organ and its environment.
Rosenstein brings these two results to one conclusion. " If organic
disease rests on the one hand upon hereditarily acquired organ inferi-
orities and on the other hand is the accompaniment of the marked evi-
dences of a type of sexuality opposite to that possessed by the indi-
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ABSTRACTS III
vidual, then the facts of organ inferiority and the degrees of sexual
development must belong together." There are many factors which
confirm 'this conclusion. In the first place, Adler ascribes the func-
tional disturbances, such as the neuroses and psychoses, to the same
predisposing cause. At the same time, Fliess explains the essence of
neurotic fears by the appearance in the same individual of opposing
sexual impulses. Fliess was also the first to call attention to the rela-
tion between left-handedness and artistic talent. Adler, on the other
hand, from his standpoint says that talent is the result of a successful
central compensation and ofttimes over-compensation which is the
manifestation of a psychic superstructure on an originally inferior
organ. It is just because the inferior organ retains its embryonal char-
acter that it and its corresponding nervous mechanism is able to acquire
a post-fetal development
As a result of these views many manifestations are made clear; as,
for instance, the frequent combination of art and homo-sexuality. We
also understand the so-called products of decadence as they appear in
history. These are the times of strongly marked organ inferiority and,
at the same time, a displacement in the relationship of the sexual sub-
stances. We begin to understand the appearances in these epochs of
many neuroses and psychoses on the one hand, and appearances of a
manifold artistic endowment on the other. We begin to understand
the relationship of the above with the increased number of feminine
men and masculine women, and their relationship to the artistic and
positive character of the times. At the same time, we get an under-
standing of the sinfulness, the opposite of the neuroses, and of the
increased number of organic diseases which goes hand in hand with
all of this.
Rosenstein, in order to explain more clearly the relationship between
Fliess and Adler, draws upon a work of Halban's, "The Development
of Sexual Characteristics," Archiv fiir Gynakologie, 1903, Vol. 70.
Halban develops the view that under the influence of the sexual glands,
indifferent tissues are stimulated to develop into secondary sexual char-
acteristics, while the whole foundation of the individual, including
primary, secondary, and psychic sexual characteristics, is resident
within the primary cell. A single sexual impulse whose origin is un-
known causes the development of all the attributes that bielong to each
sex. Hermaphroditism, according to Halban, is a disturbance of the
normal activity by virtue of which not a single, but a "double sexual
impulse" determines the fetal and post-embryonal development. We
see here that Fliess and Halban have arrived at the same point — one
premising fundamental bi-sexuality, the other a "double sexual im-
pulse."
The hermaphrodite, according to Halban, is a degeneration product
He develops the hypothesis which shall account for its creation to the
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112 ABSTRACTS
fact that a spermatozoa furnished -with less than normal energy is
unable to destroy the feminine tendency of the ovum, and in this way
the masculine character is tmable to develop more fully. The theory of
organ inferiority allies itself to this when Adler says that the inferior
organ in its morphology and function is stamped with an embryonal
character. If we add to this the fact that Adler was able to show in
most cases multiple organ inferiority, and that these were accompanied
by an inferiority of the sexual apparatus, we are forced to the conclu-
sion that the hermaphrodite of Halban, the intermediary person of
Fliess, are those in whom the whole constitution did not in its embry-
onal development reach its normal end, and is, in consequence, inferior
and laden with embryonal organs. For we must picture to ourselves
that in the normal undamaged cell, which is a union of male and
female cell, as the result of a cause totally unknown to us, it reaches to
one sexual development at the expense of the other. When, as a result
of the causes which Adler makes responsible for the inferiority, a fetal
want of development results, the normal development becomes inhibited.
The opposite sexual characteristics are not sufficiently repressed and
the organs retain at the same time their embryonal character which
stamps them with the mark of inferiority. The completion of their de-
velopment can only take place after birth under favorable auspices by
means of compensation. We can see, however, how far the agreement
is in these three views; for instance, in hypospadias. This condition,
according to Fliess, is a result of the change in the sexual substances
of the individual ; according to Halban, is the effect of both sexual im-
pulses on the external genitals; while Adler includes it in the complex
of the manifestations of organ inferiority.
In order to relate this to a biological viewpoint, Rosenstein refers to
a work of Kieman who, in speaking of contrary sexual receptives,
shows that in the lower forms insufficiently developed individuals show
regressions to the hermaphroditic type of animal life. That fruit which
is the result of the fetal lack of development is unable to reach the
highest point of mono-sexual development, and suffers at the same time
the imprint of this lack on all its other organs. Adler has pointed out
that the end result that is obtained cannot be considered degeneration
but rather a regeneration. Nature makes such changes to the damages
sustained by the organism in its lack of development^ with its inherent
greater tendency to growth and variability* that a better adaptation to
its environment is obtained.
It is well known that in order to understand inversion the theories
of bi-sexuality have been much employed. Halban from his standpoint
says : " As a rule, the sexual psyche is laid down just as the other sexual
characteristics are. In other words, an ovum becomes, as the result of
some unknown impulse, either male or female. All its sexual organs
in the widest meaning of the word and also its psychic disposition is
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ABSTRACTS 1 13
determined for it." But as disturbances of this normal impulse can
take place, we can have as a result either hermaphrodite or else we
have an individual with masculine or feminine organs and the psyche
of the opposite sex. Rosenstein thinks that we have learned since that
there is no sharp line of demarcation between the normal and the
hermaphrodite, but that it is rather a matter of degree.
Psychoanalytic research, on the other hand, approaches the whole
problem from another angle. As the result of its therapeutic endeavors,
it lays a great deal more stress on the acquired characteristics. Freud
postulates an indifferent sexual impulse which is not bound to the object
as much as we commonly suppose it to be, so that the attempt to find its
object begets for it many dangers through infantile experiences, fixa-
tions, etc
But according to Adler, the child's feelings of inferiority, its con-
sciousness of its own weakness as contrasted with that of the father;
false evaluation as regards the differences between the sexes; and false
sexual theories, all give the boys the feeling of femininity which be-
comes fixed for later life as a manifest homo-sexuality or, as the result
of an incomplete repression, develops into a neuroses.
The psychoanalytic viewpoint considers the ontogenetic factors, but
with reservations. Without the assumption of a constitutionally dis-
posed attraction to the sex of the same kind, no explanation will hold
water. Even although one does not know all of the differences in the
psyche of the sexes, this much remains true, that the differences en-
forced by the object to be achieved and the difiFerences in their role
which must take place in the sexual act, bring about, of necessity, a
difference in their psychic constitutions. We must presuppose that
both forms of the psyche are present in the inversion, and the above-
mentioned concept of Halban and the "intermediary region" of Fliess
give support to this view. Even Sadger, who was the first to give
proof of the possibility of the complete cure of inversion, admitted that
even though psychoanalysis has done much to clear up the problem, a
complete explanation is still not possible.
In speaking of a case of homo-sexuality, Sadger says: "The fixa-
tion of the masculine love was the result of a repression of the hetero-
sexual component, just as, on the other hand, in every normally sexed
person the homo-sexual element must be repressed. The final deciding
factor, by virtue of which one or the other of these is repressed, resides
in constitutionally organic factors and is a complete riddle to us."
In his attempt to show how the theories of Fliess and Adler give a
biological foundation to Freud's theory of the neuroses, Rosenstein re-
capitulates their theories. He shows that, according to Freud, the
libido is composed of many partial instincts all present in childhood;
all these partial instincts become fused in the normally developing indi-
vidual into normal sexuality; but where an individual has what Freud
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114 ABSTRACTS
calls the sexual constitution, individual components are congenitally
strong; the child reveals a sexual precocity which allows a fixation of
these perverse impulses. If the normal sexual libido as a result of
psychic conflicts is inhibited, the repressed perverse instincts manifest
themselves as symptoms; in other words, a neurosis is a negative of a
perversion. Adler, in addition, has shown that the sex constituion, at
least in the child, reveals manifold organ inferiority. The so-called
erogenous zone of Freud and the sexual precocity are synonymous with
Adler's organ inferiority which, striving after primary pleasure sensa-
tions, pursues its path with increased intensity. In this way, Rosen-
stein finds the neurotic disposition to be grounded in biology, and shows
the necessity of bringing the concept of bi-sexuality into the same
picture. He states his final conclusion when he says: "When two
research tendencies independent of each other, starting from different
viewpoints and seeking different aims, are such in their results that they
meet in a third concept, such as the theory of the neuroses of Freud,
they prove the truth that it is contained within themselves, and at the
same time strengthen the theories which have resulted from the facts
which Freud has observed.
3. Concerning Urethral Eroticism. — ^No single point in Freud's sexual
theories arouses such bitter, almost personally touched antagonism as
the fact that the anal region has an erogenous significance — ^this in
spite of the fact that the slightest contemplation reveals that pederasty
is as old as the human race and as well known, and was even recog-
nized in Greece. The statement that children would not empty their
bowels in order to retain the pleasurable sensations which accompanied
their retention was laughed at. All of this becomes easily understood
when one considers that this form of eroticism is most common in child-
hood and is often the strongest one, and may persist throughout life.
Or, on the other hand, by a tremendous expenditure of energy, this
tendency is repressed in the deepest layers of the soul. In his analyses
and studies Sadger soon realized that in addition to anal-erotic there
was, in many cases, an even stronger erotic which was related to the
urinary apparatus and its products and manifested itself in the very
earliest period of childhood He gives it the name of urethral-erotic.
Under this term he includes not only the urethra and the urine but the
whole peripheral urinary apparatus from the bladder to the external
urethral orifice.
From the time of puberty or shortly before it, this urethral-erotic
may be the model on which all subsequent sexual life is formed. The
relationship is close, even though both products have not the same
psychic value. It is clear that the infantile erotic, not considering the
thumb sucking, is bound mostly to the anal region and to the urinary
apparatus. The regular discharge of these wastes is one of the most
important duties required of the infant, and, for a relatively long time.
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ABSTRACTS II5
is the only duty demanded of him. Everything else is exacted in a
playful fashion; but the regulation of his natural functions is the first
duty which approaches him with the inevitability of life itself. Here
we have the beginning of duty and the firm "thou must"! And
nowhere does the child's resistance reach such productive degrees and
nowhere is it persisted in to such an extent as in the negation of this
natural duty.
As a rule, it is possible to train children in regard to these things
by the end of the first year, generally by the end of the second. At
first they begin to sleep quietly through the night without soiling them-
selves, and gradually they learn to control their bowels during the day-
time. Normal children of good intelligence who persist in not acquir-
ing these good habits until the third year or even later are usually found
to be intense urethral-erotic individuals, in addition to being anal-erotic
It is only thus that we can understand how bright, intelligent children
in spite of admonition, threats, rewards, and punishments, persist in such
bad habits. The first thing noted in such children is the frequency of
micturition, which not uncommonly is associated with a real polyuria,
and soon symptoms are noticed which reveal the fact that the act and
its products have for the child an intense pleasure. Parents of such
children complain that the child needs continual service, always wants
to sit on the pot, is always wet, etc. This increased desire to urinate,
which sometimes is aggravated to an incontinence — frequently lasting
late into life — or having a recrudescence after a period of quiescence,
makes the education and up-bringing of these children a very difficult
task. These children derive a particular pleasure from emptying their
bladders. This is often revealed by the expression of their faces, their
half simpleton, half vacant stare, and also by the habit of urinating on
their own bodies, which later on is projected on those they love. That
the act of urination is capable of an erogenous sensation is a fact of
common observation experienced by all when for some extreme reason they
are forced to retain the urine. The same is true of retained feces. In
both instances we have a well-marked pleasure sensation which is inde-
pendent of the relief afforded by the evacuation. For urethral-erotic
children, however, the mere act of urination has a pleasure content,
even when large quantities are not present. Such children very often
evacute only small quantities at a time. One of Sadger's patients re-
members distinctly in his childhood that he never completed the act of
emptying his bowels or bladder, thus being enabled to repeat the act
frequently and so extract from it the greatest possible pleasure.
Finally, he mentions the fact that wetting one's own body with urine
gives an extra pleasure which such children, in spite of threats and even
severe corporal punishment, persist in for the longest time. As a
result, this type will not go to the pot, and, in spite of filled bladders,
often wet themselves, although they know that corporal punishment is
the immediate result.
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Il6 ABSTRACTS
Another aspect of urethral-erotic is the abnormal early sensitiveness
of the corpora-cavemoso-urethra which is the result of retained urine.
This has, as its final consequence^ the very opposite impulse of urina-
tion : namely, its retention. As a result of that it is a common observa-
tion for adult males to realize that urine which has been held of neces-
sity stimulates sexual excitement and may give rise to erections such as
take place in the early hours of the morning. Any one who wishes to
make this observation can note that the same is frequently true of in-
fants, and even of young boys. In both these latter erections take place
as the result of the retention of urine. Sadger thinks that this physio-
logical effect is consciously used by the child for its erogenous benefit
He thinks such urethral-erotic children elaborate the classical theory
held by so many juveniles that impregnation is the result of the father's
urinating into the mother, and upon this is built the " wish fantasy " to
have a child in the same way. It has also been observed that children
who have been trained have periodical lapses of bed wetting and even of
wetting during the day. Sadger thinks that this is regularly the result
of sexual excitement in the child.
In addition to the sexual overdetermination of urine as a manifesta-
tion of urethral-erotic he then describes the increased eroticity of the
urethra. He states that hyperesthesia and anesthesia of the canal are
the obverse and reverse of the same condition, and that the excessive or
dimini^ed sensitiveness of the urethral canal is nothing but the result of
its erogenous character.
Sadger credits this to Alfred Adler who, he says, considers the anes-
thesia as the primary condition, the hyperesthesia as the secondary com-
pensating one. The erotic of the distal urinary apparatus reveals itself
further in sensations of tickling in the urethral canal which are localized
at any point throughout its length, also in acute urethral pains having
no anatomical basis; and finally through feelings similar to those ex-
perienced in evacuation, which may or may not be accompanied by secre-
tion but are always the occasion of extreme pleasure sensations.
One of the little understood causes of masochism is the fact that
children often provoke their elders to punish them corporally, so as to
experience again the pleasurable sensations that corporal punishment
produces, either in the anal region or urethral region. If in later years
causes such as gonorrhea in the male or pregnancy in the female reani-
mate these sensations* they may persist in the form of hysterical symp-
toms. Finally, he classifies as pollution-like acts of children, who, as a
result of being frightened by their parents or guardians, wet themselves.
Sadger then takes up the objections, especially those which seem to
place the onus of the symptoms he discusses rather upon an early devel-
oped sexual apparatus than upon the urinary area. He admits a pre-
cocious sexual stimulation as an extension from the urinary tract; he
admits also the truth of Freud's assertion that in the earliest period of
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ABSTRACTS 117
childhood the urinary tract is, so to speak, a model or precursor of the
sexual one; and, finally, in the phenomenon he has just described as the
pollution-like wetting or the tickling feelings in the urethra, it is possible
to differentiate the sphere in which they should be accounted. Over and
above all this, there are a number of reasons which justify the concept
of the urethral-erotic; in the first place, the typical feelings of satisfac-
tion which are part of the act of micturition. In addition to this, from
the time of puberty there are undoubtedly a number of sexual phenomena
which are, without doubt, a continuation of the urethral-erotic, in fact,
they seem to carry it on.
Sadger maintains that the infantile urinary-erotic is the model for all
the later developing sexual acts, the transition being all the more easily
understood since it is merely transposed from one secretion to another.
He likewise interpolates such pathological manifestations as delayed
evacuation, increased frequency of pollutions of spermatorrhea, coitus-
interruptus, the neuralgias of the genital organs, psychic impotence, and
the nervous disturbances of the urinary tract, as a simple continuation
of the childish urine-eroticism. He maintains that it has the same sig-
nificance, almost the same forms, with the difference that the sexual
secretions now take the place of the urinary ones. Where urinary in-
continence was the case, we now have multiple pollutions, spermatorrhea,
or ejaculatio praecox. The retentio urinae now becomes a delayed evacu-
ation; the habit of emptying the bladder in small doses now becomes a
masturbatio interrupta or a congressus reservatus. Finally, he insists
that all these conversions may take place but must not be allowed — ^the
childish urinary eroticism may persist as such. The strength of the
primary urethral-erotic in combination with its later psychic conversion
he ascribes as a cause of the lack of success of so many therapeutic
measures when directed against these conditions. As a further proof he
mentions the fact that the Viennese neurologist, Maximilian Steiner, re-
ports that the large majority of his sexual neurasthenics complain less
of the disturbances in the sexual sphere than of ones in the urinary tract
Most of these cases follow a cured gonorrhea; but following it the
neurasthenic complains of a vast array of troubles. Interesting, too, is
the habit of man at the time his sexual functions come to a close. Those
men with prostatic troubles repeat the same manifestations which char-
acterized infants and small children. If they suffer with a retention of
urine, it helps them to be put into a warm bath or to urinate in a bowl of
water.
Sadger then takes up the question of the outcome of the infantile
urethral-erotic. Outside of its conversion at the time of puberty into a
normal sexual activity, a part of it remains as it is, or in a slightly modi-
fied form continues into adult life. The child, who, after retaining his
urine, passes it from him in a long arc, continues that act as a child when
he holds contests with other children as to the height and length of his
urinary stream. The great desire that many have of urinating from a
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Il8 ABSTRACTS
great height, the pleasure others find in urinating in public rather than in
private, have their origin partly in the instincts of exhibition. Finally,
after mentioning other acts of a similar nature, he calls attention to the
child's love of playing with fire; and in conjunction with this calls atten-
tion to the experience of children's nurses, proving that those children
who, during the day, have played with fire or matches, wet their beds at
night. Another modification of the urethral-erotic is the symbolization
of the urine by water. He gives a number of instances of this, such as
the love of certain children to play with water, to wash themselves and
their clothes, and their doll clothes in it, etc. The sublimation of the
urethral-erotic manifests itself in the various activities of man from
sport to vocations. Such youngsters turn to water sports with passionate
energy; they swim or row or sail. On the same basis, Sadger thinks they
choose the calling of sailors. Others become interested in mills and tur-
bines and water works, and, if individuals of increased ability, become
marine engineers or constructors of large canals. He does not mean to
imply that this is true of all those people who take part in these activities,
but that it is true of those who, as we say, enter into it with heart and
soul. Nor does Sadger wish to be understood as implying that every
captain of a ship or that every engineer has become such as the result
of his urethral-erotic, but he does maintain that a large number of
these people, especially those who follow their calling with intense
interest, have this constitutional disposition, and that throughout their
lives it determines their interests. In art, too, Sadger maintains that
this sublimated urinary-erotic manifests itself. This is especially true
of fountains. He cites the well-known ''Maeneken Pis" in Brussels,
and the " Brunen-Buberl " of Munich ; likewise, he mentions the " Tu-
genbrunnen" in Nuremburg, where water is being constantly emptied
from the breasts of the women who make up this fountain.
Finally, he takes up the question of the controlling cause of the dis-
position in a marked case of urethral-erotic. He assigns the first place
to heredity. In investigating the history of his cases, he found a num-
ber of the members of their families on both sides who complained of
organic neurotic disorders of the urinary tract. In one of his cases
the grandfather died of stone in the bladder; the father had prostatic
enlargement; the mother had a chronic cystitis without any demon-
strable lesions; and, finally, the son was a marked sufferer from a very
strong urethral-eroticism from birth. In addition to this important
constitutional factor, the education of these children plays a great part
in the etiology of their troubles. Sadger warns parents to avoid
unduly handling the genitals of their children. He is astonished at
the almost unbelievable things that his patients reveal to him as having
taken place in their childhood. In some cases the many necessary
changes of clothing carried out by the mother or governess were so
lovingly lingered over that the child was precociously stimulated. He
warns also against prolonging the period in which the child is helped
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ABSTRACTS 119
to perform his various functions. He maintains that the child should
be taught to do these alone as soon as possible.
Finally, he cites a number of interesting cases to prove his thesis.
He closes his article with rather detailed reports of four cases. The
first is that of a twenty-three-year-old man, homo-sexual, who had an
active sexual desire exclusively for boys from twelve to fifteen years
of age. He also had a bronchial asthma and a pyrexia, both of which
were proven to be hysterical, and a very unusual urethral-erotic. He
was the only child of an aristocratic family, and from birth was sur-
rounded with the most intense parental love, which he continued to
desire.
One of the most striking symptoms of this man was his desire to see
boys of the type which attracted him urinate; at the same time, to see
their penis. He noticed this for the first time when he was fourteen
years of age. Throughout his entire life this patient derived a great
deal of sexual pleasure from every action or manifestation in the
urinary realm.
This case, viewed from Adler's concept of the organ inferiorities as
the basis of neuroses, lends itself to the theory, in that, in the first place,
the father's family showed many manifestations of genito-urinary
disorders. The grandfather, in fact, died as a result of such a disease ;
the father had all the symptoms of prostatic enlargement. Further
predisposing factors were the fact that the patient's parents were in the
habit of performing all sorts of private acts, such as dressing, undress-
ing, toilet activities, etc., in the presence of the child. This patient,
early in life, began to symbolize his urethral-erotic and, at times, to
sublimate it in passions. With two and a half years we note that his
favorite game was to play with a sprinkling can. At three and a half
years he was given his heart's desire, a pump that really pumped water,
and the mother noted in her diary that her young son was so attached
to this plaything that it was almost impossible to make him go to bed.
This passion for ptmips lasted for quite some time. Following it he had
one for sprinkling carts. Beginning with adolescence all forms of water
sports were adopted by him with the greatest of enthusiasm. These
water sports were pursued in spite of the most strenuous opposition on
the part of his parents, and in the face of the lack of money to engage
in them properly. One of his syftiptoms was a dysuria-psychica. For
many years it had been impossible for him to pass water if anybody
were watching him. When this occurred, he had a feeling of disgrace
in not being able to urinate. This symptom manifested itself in his
fifteenth year, and began during the period when he loved a certain
boy (the greatest love of his life). Further analysis revealed the fact
that this symptom had its inception much earlier, in fact, at the age of
seven.
After discussing in much detail a number of symptoms in the field
of urethral-erotic manifested by this patient, Sadger draws this con-
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I20 ABSTRACTS
elusion : " The primary factor in this case is the constitutionally strong
erogenous character of the peripheral urinary tract and of the urine.
This is shown in the pleasurable sensations at urination, in the inclina-
tion to early erections, even in infancy, and the tendency to the retention
of urine. This type of child discovers early that by this mechanism they
can derive pleasure, and from that time on, they practice it regularly.
If, in addition to this, and in the case of boys, the parents are in the
habit of helping the child to urinate by taking hold of the penis to bring
it out, the child learns to demand this as an additional source of pleas-
ure, and, at the same time, makes use of it to satisfy his exhibitionistic
tendency. Following this, the other component, that of the tendency
towards sexual curiosity, is stimulated and directs itself, in the first
place, towards the parents and their urinary acts. The dysuria-psychica,
which comes later, is a continuation of the urinary retention practised
in the very first years of infancy, and similarly, too, it is based on the
increased erogenous properties of the urinary apparatus. The looking
and exhibition desire for urination both of one's own and that of the
loved person is sacrificed in the cultural evolution of the individual This
repression, as the result of cultural forces, naturally is increased when
the repressed tendencies are stimulated later in life by the presence of
a loved object. On the basis of this we can understand that tfie inability
to urinate in the presence of an object which is sexually attractive is
the result of the stimulation of the patient by that object, with the result
that the repression must be increased, and has an end result, the com-
plete inability of the patient to urinate."
The second case which he discusses is that of a thirty-two-year-old
compulsion-neurotic. This patient, in addition to typical compulsions,
thoughts, and acts, showed a large number of urine-erotic symptoms.
These he had had since his third year. The incontinence of urine,
which was one of the first or chief symptoms, disappeared at the age
of nine, as the result of his falling in love with a very neat and pain-
fully clean teacher. As a result of this transference, he determined to
overcome his bad habits and to be as clean and neat as the beloved
teacher. In this case, as in the former, the constitutional and environ-
mental factors were present. This patient married a girl, who, without
doubt, was also the subject of a very severe urethral-erotic. Regularly
with every pregnancy she had a so-called cystitis, with strangury, pain,
and burning, which began immediately following the first cessation of
the menses and disappeared immediately at the end of the pregnancy.
As a child she wet her bed. They have two children who showed this
form of eroticism, practically from birth.
(To be continued)
NOTICE.— All business communications should be addressed to The
Psychoanalytic Review, 3617 Tenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
All manuscripts should be sent to Dr. William A White, Saint Eliza-
beth's Hospital, Washington, D. C.
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO AN
UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN CONDUCT
Volume V April, 1918 Number 2
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
THE INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS
By James J. Putnam, M.D.
OF BOSTON
I have had the opportunity, during the past few years, to study
carefully the case of an unmarried lady, about fifty years of age, a
portion of whose history I have recently recorded elsewhere.^ She
was the oldest child of hard-working New England parents, typically
high-minded, studious, intelligent, and strongly " religious '* in their
habits and traditions. The other children were two brothers, one of
whom had died a good many years before I knew the patient, as had
her father also, who played a part of immense importance for the
development of her character and temperament. Not long 'before
her coming to me, her mother had likewise passed away, leaving her
alone except for her younger brother, who was married and had two
children. As a young girl and throughout her adolescence this
patient lived in a mental atmosphere strongly charged with ideas of
"duty and sin," "sin and duty," to such an extent that it became
very hard for her to follow her natural instincts — ^which were (I
now believe) those of an affectionate, lively, sociable, pleasure-
loving, rather imaginative person, with emotional tendencies which
were in part of a somewhat immature type. Everything that, as a
child, she did or abstained from doing was done or abstained from
intensely, and in conscious obedience to orders — ^which, although
kindly meant, were often ill-chosen as regards her best development
— and the emotional reactions that attended her efforts at con-
formity were marked by strong repressions. Ill health in childhood,
^ Journal of Abnormal Psychology, June, 1917.
121
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122 JAMES J. PUTNAM
and other influences (narrow parental views on the subject of amuse-
ment, etc.) made her outward life a very restricted one, with but
few of the outlets in the form of play that are of such immense im-
portance for the growing child; and she became, in consequence,
rather petulant, precocious, introvertive, self-assertive, with strong,
largely unconscious longings, the nature of which it has become pos-
sible to investigate. But, hand in hand with these qualities, there
went also fine, generous traits, with marked powers of self-denial
and self-devotion, together with literary capacities which only needed
adequate development to become excellent.
To complete this brief outline of her outward life, I will say that
she went eventually to college, sacrificing, in so doing — for the sake
of conformity to the wishes of her father, to whom she was pas-
sionately attached — 2l desire to study music, for which she had some
talent. Repressed, misunderstood and unacknowledged cravings,
distressing conflicts, conscious struggles against bodily weaknesses
(dependent, in part, on definable disturbances of metabolism^),
marked her college life. Although seeming a normal, if rather
feeble person, she suffered, in silence, from typical compulsive tend-
encies, from a singular habit of doing and saying the wrong thing
at critical moments, and from sundry other peculiarities, hostile to
her peace and indicative of an un-free, more or less dissociated per-
sonality. In spite of these handicaps she was able to teach success-
fully during several years after graduation, and eventually to devote
much time and energy to the care of her mother, with whom, how-
ever, she never felt thoroughly in sympathy and from whom she did
not receive — ^so she believes — ^the genuine affection that was a
daughter's due. Painfully conscious of this lack, and given to ex-
aggerated estimates based on undue sensitiveness, she felt her emo-
tional life checked and starved; and although her intense love for
her father and her brothers (thoroughly disinterested in part, if
partly the expression of a personal craving) compensated, in some
measure for the unsatisfactoriness of her relations to her mother,
and became, presumably, itself intensified thereby, yet the net result
was an increasing tendency to self-imposed social isolation and mor-
bid introspection. Fortunately, her intelligence, good feeling, and
good sense, though worsted temporarily in these inner struggles, re-
tained their elasticity, and the results of treatment were eminently
satisfactory.
2 She had a mild but troublesome Graves' disease, which necessitated
constant treatment.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 123
I have no intention of describing the course of the analysis as a
whole, but only of discussing certain selected symbolisms of the
patient's dreams. The justification for doing this lies mainly in the
intrinsic interest of these symbolisms in themselves, partly in other
considerations which will appear.
Since first attempting to describe these symbolisms and their
meaning (now a ntmiber of months ago), my feeling about
them and about the problems which the thought of them sug-
gested has undergone a considerable change. In the beginning scien-
tific curiosity was my main motive, and the symbols stood for noth-
ing more than pointers to erotic traits which repression had con-
cealed. As I began to write, however, with this idea in view, I felt
that I was in the way of giving a one-sided impression of this patient
in dwelling so strongly on these infantile tendencies that seemed so
strikingly at variance with her other qualities.
Wishing, as she did, to make her experience, even if painful, of
use to others and to the cause of science, the patient was ready
enough to see emphasis thrown, if that seemed necessary, on the
erotic, pleasure-loving, individualistic side of her character, which
had grown luxuriantly in the dark, although occupying for the most
part a compartment by itself.* Also, moved by the same feelings,
she was inclined to assert that even the tendencies which had seemed
altruistic — her very genuine love for her father and her " religious "
habits of thought — ^had been utilized by her as fuel for the flame of
her repressed erotic fancies ; and I was content, at first, to accept her
view without much mental comment. The patient had written but
(see below) some interesting associations connected with the idea
of " air " as a creative agent, which had been aroused by the reading
of Freud's "Leonardo,"* where the legend is recalled of the vultures
impregnated by the wind, and had embodied in them some striking
memories of her early, Bible-reading days, and various thoughts that
connected these memories with her father and her brother and
brought to light the ardor of her love for them.
But, more and more, as I thought the matter over, I began to ask
myself whether this attitude was justified, and spent much thought
over the old problem, what " religion " is, and whether it has any
standing in its own right as a real source of motives, or must be con-
sidered solely as the "projection" of a " wish- fantasy," and what
* It goes without saying that these tendencies permeated, in some measure,
her whole mental life.
^ English translation published by Mo£Fat, Yard & Co., New York.
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124 JAMES J. PUTNAM
the bearing is of these questions on the significance of symbolism
and of dreams. A similar set of inquiries arose with reference to
the possible relationship between the evident philosophical and log-
ical properties of the symbol " three "* and its equally evident erotic
meanings. Here, again, I may say that the patient, although amply
able, by virtue of ability and inclination, to deal with logical and
philosophical situations, was quite willing, at first, to minimize the
more abstruse meanings of the symbol " three " as having anything
to do with her choice of it as a mode of expression, and to accept
the erotic associations as alone of causal value.
But as time went on I came to regard her readiness to adopt the
purely erotic or " infantile-fixation " explanation, as a " symptcan,"
and became persuaded, for myself, that certain ideas which I had
for a long time entertained, but had laid aside as perhaps of little
service in connection with strictly psychoanalytic work, were, after
all, of practical significance for the understanding of this case.
So far as these ideas can profitably be formulated at this point,
they are as follows : No wish — not even a dream wish of infantile
type, that could not express itself adequately in words or even in
symbols — can be entertained as if it stood for itself alone. Every
wish implies a wisher, and a wisher with a personality that thrills
with self-foreshadowing possibilities of adjustment to planes of de-
velopment not yet clearly visible to him but determined by the fact
that he is a member of a group, and a group of such a sort that its
boundaries tend to widen the more he may strive to define its limits.
In fact, every special group tends to dissolve into the immaterial
something that corresponds to the purposes for which it came into
existence and others which were implied in them. These possibilities
of development tend to form a theoretically discoverable background
of association for the symbols in which each wish is clothed ; and if
one was bent on tracing out all the thought-experiences as well as
the act-experiences' from which a given symbol derives its connota-
tive meanings, it would be as important to discover and define these
foreshadowings^ of possible adaptations to actual and ideal rela-
' See below.
* In fact, the difference between the two is mainly nominal.
^ Every man's possibilities of development are far more truly a part of
him at any and every given moment than he would be inclined to admit.
** And like a pilgrim who is travelling on a road where he hath never been
before, who believes that every house which he sees from afar is the hostel,
and finding that it is not directs his belief to another, and so from house to
house until he comes to the hostel; even so our soul, so soon as it enters
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 125
tionships as it is to discover and define the buried experiences of
eariy childhood that linger in the form of nearly useless, or even
harmful, sensuous, pleasure-giving cravings of sorts familiar to all
students of psychoanalysis.
In a former paper® I likened these latter cravings (un welcomed
and unacknowledged by consciousness) to unwelcome and unac-
knowledged infants whom their parents gladly would suppress and
if possible forget, and the former (the not yet thought-out thoughts
and feelings) to children unborn but dreaded as sources of unmeas-
urable responsibility. As I have said, I had laid aside these concep-
tions as perhaps likely to distract my attention from the study of
the infantile fantasies and fixations to which it seemed so important,
as it is so difficult, to do justice. For many situations, and in the
case of many patients, as where the main problem is the discovery
of fairly well defined causes of specific phobias, it does indeed ap-
pear unnecessary to deal much, if at all, with considerations relating
to the "whole meaning"* or possibilities of development, or "as-
pirations" of the individual as a whole. In other cases, however,
of which the present is an example, this is, I think, not true. In
spite of her willingness to admit the contrary, this lady has ex-
hibited, in increasing degree, social-sublimation longings and relig-
upon the new and never-yct-made journey of life, directs its eyes to the goal
of its supreme good, and therefore whatever it sees that appears to have
some good in it, it thinks to be it. And because its knowledge is at first
imperfect, through having no experience or instruction, little goods appear
great to it; and therefore it begins first from them in its longing. And so
we see little children intensely longing for an apple, and then going on further,
longing for a little bird, and then further on longing for fine clothes, and
then a horse, and then a mistress, and then wealth, but not much, then much
and then enormous. And this comes to pass because in none of these things
does he find that for which he is ever searching, but believes he will find it
further on."— Dante Alighieri: The Convivio, Fourth Treatise, Chap. XII,
I. 146.
Every person is, in short, not only the product of theoretically definable
experiences; he is also and of necessity a searcher, and the undefined objects
of his search (which are by no means covered by motives definable as libido)
exist in a measure as determinants of his course. After a time every one's
"issues" define themselves as moral issues, as obligations, and a psycho-
analytic investigation, for physician as well as for patient, is not solely an
affair of reason but also an affair of morals. And the same is true of the
mind itself.
8 Imago, VoL I ; reply to criticism by Dr. Ferenczi.
• Cf. Josiah Royce's use of this term in various publications.
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126 JAMES J. PUTNAM
lous longings^® not wholly traceable to metamorphosed libido-striv-
ings. This proposition is only the expression of my opinion, and it
would doubtless command more ready acceptance if it could be
clearly shown that a man's mental growth is not wholly dependent
on Sivis a tergo; that is, not wholly a product of biologic evolution
— ^a process of adjustment to a "given" physical environment (and
eventually a mental environment though conceived of as an out-
growth of the physical) — ^but an attempt on the part of a really spon-
taneous and creative being to "find itself " in a self-creating universe
of which it is a representative member. Of course, evolution as a
whole would represent such an " attempt " on a large scale, and my
argument would imply that the " energetic " something which under-
lies evolution, contains and uses, at each moment, an impulse of
which human volition is the example most clearly evident to us.
Even if this proposition cannot be substantiated, however —
though I believe it can be — and even if the universe is built and
" works out " its destiny on some such principle as is operative in
the conversion of so much heat into so much motion, it would still
be necessary to reason as if there were such a thing as self-deter-
mination permeating and in part accounting for men's thoughts and
acts. And so, too, it would be as if no " wish " was ever wholly
" regressive " but always of such a sort as to acknowledge tacitly the
existence of social and so "moral" obligations, even in an ideal
sense.
But I pass on to the actual symbolisms that are to be considered,
and b^n with one of which the chief interest lies in its power to
illustrate afresh how oddly and unexpectedly the influences act
which have their main root in the erotic constituent of our uncon-
scious wishes.
When this patient was at college, namely, her handwriting pro-
voked comment from one of her professors, who noticed a marked
tendency on her part to finish off her letters — more especially the
capital letters — with elaborately long, full and rounding curves.
This peculiarity of handwriting is of a sufficiently familiar type,
and various causes, amongst which a general expansiveness of tem-
perament would figure, might be brought forward to account for it.
Its principal interest lies in the fact that it had (in her estimation)
a partial origin in an anal erotism which, in its turn, is of significance
as being one of several signs of an autoerotic tendency which played,
indirectly, an important part in the building of her temperament.
10 That is, desire to play a part in social betterments^ taking, on the one
hand^ a practical, on the other hand, an idealized form.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 127
This fondness for full, rounding curves showed itself, not alone
in the handwriting but in various ways, at different periods of her
childhood, and one evidence of it was a marked fondness for pitchers
with rounding sides, the first of which was given her by a cousin
when she was but a small child, and soon afterwards broken, to her
intense distress. The circumstance was trivial enough, and there
would seem to be no reason for going beyond the obvious fact of a
real esthetic fancy, to account for it, or for the further fact that
when she was about nine years old, and first took drawing lessons,
her fancy for pitchers and vases with " full, rounded sides " became
almost an obsession. It is, however, of scientific interest, in view of
what we know of the effect of early childhood experiences of erotic
sorts, in helping to explain mental tendencies far more important
than the insignificant ones here at stake, to note that these memories
connected themselves with another that took her back to her third
or fourth year. At that period her father took her for her first visit
to the real country, which — full of eager receptivity as she was,
both for things of the senses and things of the spirit — greatly aroused
her interest.
" One mormng we started out to walk across the fields, but I did not
walk — rather I skipped by his (her father's) side for pure joy. The
blue sky, the fleecy clouds, the green grass and frolicking lambs, all
told of the coming of spring. . . ."
" I noticed some little specks on the grass. Of course I had to ask
what they were. When I heard that they were the droppings of the
lambs I became quite excited. After that I observed the habits of all
animals. Being in the country gave me ample opportunity for such
studies. The horse, the cow, the dog, the cat, and the pigs in the pig-
sty fascinated me and started' up a series of ' whys ' within my inquiring
mind. At the farm where I was staying the pig-sty was next to an
old-fashioned ' privy.' It was built very loosely ; there were big cracks
between the boards. Whenever I was taken to that place, I had a good
chance to notice the pigs, because they were visible through the cracks.
I could see pink noses poked between the boards. I could hear grunt-
ing and squealing. I had a feeling of terror ; I thought the pigs wanted
to eat me. I was thankful that the hole in my own special little seat
was very small, so that I could not fall through it and be devoured. Of
course I was in no danger, but I was always fearful of a mishap. Some
older person had charge of me, so I was perfectly safe. On our return
to the house we would stop to look at the pigs. I enjoyed the sight
of their little curly tails; I wondered why pigs had them and people did
not. 'Oh, God made them so;' — ^that was the invariable answer to my
question."
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128 JAMES J. PUTNAM
With her present memory of these events, she believes that there
was an unconscious bond of erotic interest — ^to which her emotional
nature predisposed her, even before her visit to the country with her
father — 'between her fancy for curving letter-appendages, her fond-
ness for curving pitchers (and similar objects having an even more
potent and private interest), and finally, her excitement, when three
years old, over the pig-sty discoveries with their obvious connota-
tions. And so, insignificant in itself, the experience acquires the
interest of a typical experience. The pig-sty fascination stood for
a dim and varied host of sensuous fascinations, of sorts which could
be partly named, and which connected a certain phase of infancy
(when the patient's active fancy worked on materials already
tabooed) with another and esthetic phase, looking toward the future
and seeking instinctively to utilize the sensuousness of infancy as an
element in its own development. Men undertake to read temper-
ament through a study of the handwriting, and, crude though this
branch of science is, it doubtless has a certain standing. But if it
ever develops further, or in proportion as it does so, this will happen
in part through the medium of observations of the general type of
those here given. For it is largely emotion — and if emotion, then
preeminently, those forms of emotion that hint at sensuously colored
experiences of kinds now prohibited — which give, perhaps not the
main impulse through which customs and habits are determined,
but an impulse which is of peculiar importance for a double reason :
namely, partly because its appeal is strong and subtle, partly because
it is withdrawn from supervision. What happened here in the case
of handwriting is liable to happen, and must happen, in the case of
many other customs that are more vitally important. The fact that
the esthetic interest was also real made it of more service as a means
of exciting a sensuous, non-esthetic, fancy (deeply founded as all
anal complexes are bound to be) ; and the reverse was likewise true.
" The original little brown pitcher had a fat little body, with curves
just like those of a pig's back. The handle of the pitcher was like a
curly tail. A fat pig and a fat pitcher were linked in thought subcon-
sciously. An interest in art became a very easy matter when founded
upon such a love of curves. ... In adding tails to letters, I was renew-
ing a delight of early childhood, a delight dating back to my third year
and to surprises at the farm. Evidently a certain chain of association
lingered in my thought In writing a paragraph of whatever nature, I
felt a distinct dissatisfaction if certain letters were left tailless. My
mind refused to rest until I had looked back over the work and had added
all the missing tails. An internal compulsion made me do this."
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 129
The "internal compulsion" of which this patient speaks was,
however, a compulsion not only to gratify a sensuous impulse of
self-indulgence, but to utilize in this gratificaticm a habit dedicated
in its own right to another purpose of greater social value ; and in
yielding to the temptation to do this the patient was, on a small scale
and with reference to a trivial matter, both denying for the moment
the sense of obligation to diis social allegiance and also, by that very
act, admitting its binding force. It will appear more clearly in the
discussion of the other symbolisms referred to in this paper, how
important this double process is for the daily life of every man. For
every one has, not the right only, but the duty and the instinct, both
to strive for a broader, more adequate expression of his best aims as
a member of society, and also, in doing this, to utilize in the best way
his emotional and sensuous endowment — ^that part of him which,
with more gifted persons, might express itself in poetry, in music,
or in art of fine sorts. In accomplishing this task the danger is con-
tinuously present that he may prostitute his best desires to the chance
of reinforcing, to the point of excess, these emotional and sensuous
elements in his nature, instead of utilizing the latter to enrich the
former. That is, he may sensualize and sexualize his religion and
his best forms of love. But those motives, which he dimly feels to
be bonds of relationship with the community and the universe at its
best, still remain as possible sources of rehabilitation and progress.
And whatever one may say of so doing as a practical proposition, it
is theoretically within the right and duty of every physician to see
that his patients realize the significance of both terms of this conflict,
or antithesis. Willing and wishing to sympathize with others who
follow the less good paths in these respects and find themselves
driven helplessly before the gusts of passion, we are bound to ob-
serve carefully the less obvious successes and failures that are taking
place before our eyes. Every one does this on a small scale, and one
hears (as described in biographical and romantic literature) the
praises of those who succeed and the criticisms of those who fail.
A great many successes and failures are, however, deeply hidden
from superficial view, and it is only through searching methods of
psychoanalytic investigation that they are brought to light.
I have next to say something about certain symbolisms related to
tnuscuhr- or movement-erotism. The remarks will best be grouped
about certain recurrent dreams, of which I will briefly report two.
The muscular feelings of excitement or relaxation here referred to
pass over without a break into those related to respiratory, or air-
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130 JAMES J. PUTNAM
erotism, and also to the father-complex, as well as to the domination
and inferiority complexes; from which points one can travel as
much further as one will.
Ogre dream, of frequent occurrence in childhood:
** I see myself wandering through an empty house. Suddenly a
dreadful ogre rushes out from one of the rooms and pursues me.
Without wings I seem to go up stairs and yet not touch them with
my feet, I hide in dark closets to escape the ogre. Then I hear
him coming and I hurry on in the greatest fear. Now I am far in
advance, now he almost grasps me. Then when I have reached the
last gasp, one of two things happens; either the roof opens and I
float out heavenward in relief and joy, or else I fall to the floor in tf
little heap of exhausted despair. At that instant the ogre disap-
pears."
This dream, familiar in type, gains in interest when taken in
connection with the next.
"My mother, my sister, and myself are living in a fine old-
fashioned mansion. It is light and airy, having many windows. The
lovely white-enamel wood-work delights me; but there is no fur-
niture in the rooms. They are absolutely bare. The house stands in
the midst of a beautiful park where magnificent oaks are so close
together that a bird's-eye view of their tops would show a carpet of
green. 1 seem to see myself high in the air enjoying such a view.
In fact, during the first few moments of the dream, I am outside of
the house looking at it and finding pleasure in its beauties and the
charm of its situation. My mother and sister^^ are in an inner room
of this big, square mansion. While dreaming I am conscious that
they also represent myself. Then I am in the house with them.
Without warning there comes, from within me, a serration as of
some force active there. In an instant it is outside of and in pursuit
of me. Beginning like a gentle breeze, it increases until it has the
strength of a hurricane which nothing can tvithstand. To escape its
power I run into a hall, and bolt behind me three doors there. I
have shut my mother and sister in with that 'dreadful something'!
But no: it cannot be confined. It passes through the bolted doors to
my side of them. Then the 'force' is no longer simply a force, but
it becomes a person with a purpose. I rush out into the park. My
feet leave the ground. With a superhuman effort I make my way
11 Cf. Stekel: Ueber den Traum. I do not, however, fully agree with
the author in his view, held at the time of publication of this valuable work
{q. v.), that these sensuous symbolisms represent sensuality alone. Reasons
for a broader view are here presented.
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in the air to the tree-tops where I walk along on the huge boughs
from tree to tree, trying to conceal myself beneath, or behind the
foliage. I look for the pursuer. There he is below me — he is like-
wise looking for me. It is a man on horseback. The horse is high->
spirited, is turning in circles, and his head is held erect by the rider's
firm grasp on the short reins. The horse cannot throw that man. I
watch them with interest. Then I find myself awake.'*
This dream opens up a number of problems which I pass by. Its
momentary interest centers in the breeze-like force, felt at first within
herself, then outside, and eventually assuming the characteristics of
her father, who was positively identified by her as the person on
horseback upon whom she gazed with admiration. The father here
corresponds in part to the creative yearnings which were so strong
in her, and of which he was at once the (acquired) object and the
symbolic expression. Such a child is like a person who has drunk
of the love-philter, and whose need to give and feel love transcends
any of the special forms and outlets that are found for it in the
course of evolutionary history. But what is, in the last analysis, the
nature and source of this need to g^ve and feel love, which is so
deeply founded in every human being? Is it solely of evolutionary
origin, and does it exist solely in the interest of the budding sex-life
which is soon to play so important a role? The study of man's social
history and instincts and of his unconquerable, unappeasable idealism
contradicts this view. If behind the father-, or mother-love there
lies, on one side, the individualistic, sensuous needs of the child, it
is equally true that beyond the father, in the other direction, there
lies a dim recognition of that for which " fatherhood " stands, in an
ideal sense. But, to get this in its full form, the child must go
beyond his experience, and get an inkling of the possibilities of de-
vdopment, or " complete meaning " of his own mind and personality.
" AUes Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichnis." The father as person —
deeply and sensuously loved as such, it may be — ^is " verganglich "
in this sense, but points to ideal possibilities of desire which are not
thus " verganglich."
This seems to me worth saying, because too much is sometimes
made of the " father-love," or " father-complex " as standing as a
model, or serving as a category, for so much else that happens later ;
as determining, for example, both the form and substance of the
religious attitude, define it as one may. The argiunent is true, but
not the whole truth. So far-reaching — ^in a sense, so all-embracing
— an emotion like that of love, which appeals so strongly to sensuous.
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132 JAMES J. PUTNAM
personal desires, upon the one side, and upon the other to a rational
disinterestedness of the highest type, in which personal claims and
wishes become merged in social claims and wishes, cannot profitably
be defined from any single standpoint. For human nature, like the
universe, has its deep, unresolvable paradoxes, such as those which
appear when one deals with such conceptions and contrasts as " body
and mind," " substance and essence," " the many and the one," and
which imply the existence of two real poles — real in their separate-
ness and equally real in their essential unity — as real and as mutually
essential as the polarities in electricity.
The strongly socialized, idealized forms of love do not exist sim-
ply as branchings-out of anything that could be thought of as a sexual
libido. They exist also as in their own right, and while they are
interpenetrated with libido, in Freud's sense, the truer statement is
that both are expressions of an everywhere operative, self -active,
creative energy.
So, too, while the religious feelings (take them as one will),
between which and the feelings of love close affinities exist, must
have their sensuous and erotic leanings (for this is only tantamount
to saying that they have an evolutionary history), it is also true that
sensuous feelings often have their religious leanings, and may, if
rightly used, enrich by their presence the fineness of the religious
feelings. By " religious feelings," in this sense, I mean the feelings
based on the recognition of the transcendent, self -active element in
ourselves and in the life outside,^* by virtue of which men are able
to preserve their independence and yet to merge their desires in
efforts and wishes for the welfare of the community in the widest
sense.
^2 It is obvious that the views here presented are related, in certain of
their trends, to opinions which others, — notably Jung, and in some respects
Adler,— have expressed, though still more to another's, here unnamed.
It should, however, be said that Adler's (and Nietzsche's) doctrines,
while they imply the underlying sociality of man's instincts as a basis for his
instinctive self-assertion, do not accordi to the larger conception its due place.
" Dominance " is not the best foundation for an ideal society.
Also, as regards Jung, while I sympathize with his recognition of the
parental-complex as not wholly covered by the sensuous element contained
in it and as based partly on a "religious" instinct, which Freud would
consider as due to fantasy alone (cf . his " Geschichte der psychoanalytischen
Bewegung," English trans. No. 25, Nerv. and Ment Dis. Monog. Se.), yet I
think that Jung fails in almost discarding the sensuous, and especially the
infantile sensuous elements altogether. Nor does he, I think, note that the
sensuous owes its intensification, in part, to the recognition, and at the same
time the defiant setting at naught, of the more spiritual obligations.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS I33
Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the principal gain or satis-
faction, instinctively sought, and won, by my patient, through these
fancies, was of a sensuous, erotic character, as the following re-
marks will show:
" The Bible," she writes, " was familiar to me from the very be-
ginning of my own personal history. At home we had family
prayers every day, and all the children read Bible-verses. The
description of the creation was fascinating in the extreme. My im-
agination pictured each detail.
"'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And
the earth was without form and void . . . '
" I wondered how the earth could take on form; then I learned that
God could create something out of nothing — at least that was the
way I interpreted what was told me.
"In Matthew xix, 26, we read:
" ' But Jesus beheld them and said unto them, With men this is im-
possible, but with God all things are possible.'
" So I believed that God could do anything. Among many ques-
tions which demanded an answer, were these important ones : Where
did little brother come from? Ans. From heaven. Who made
him? Ans. God created him. Did God make me? Ans. Yes,
God made you ; God made you and — ^and gave you to us. This rea-
soning caused me to think that only one thing was necessary to
bring a little child into the world. That one thing was a fiat of the
Almighty. God had said : ' Let there be light/ and there was light.
Now He might say: 'Let there be a child,' and there would be a
child. The simplicity of this was awe-inspiring, but did not wholly
satisfy curiosity. I wanted to know the how of everything. I bent
over my Bible again. * And the Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters.' (Genesis i, 2.) To me it seemed that not only did
the Spirit move, but the waters moved also, because He hovered
over them. I think the story of the pool of Bethesda had something
to do with this idea:
"'In these (five porches) lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of
blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. . . . For an
angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the
water. Whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in
was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.'
" That person had a new lease of life. Therefore, in one sense,
healing can be considered a creative act. But I was not so much
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134 JAMES J. PUTNAM
concerned a'bout the healing as a'bout the moving of the water. I
pictured the Spirt of God as troubling the water, far back in the
days before the world was. But what was the Spirit of God like?
The Bible helped me out on that point. The story of Pentecost was
very instructive :
" ' And when Pentecost was fully come, they were all together with
one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from
Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind; and it filled all the house where
they were sitting.'
" With great interest I read the next verse :
"'And they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak
with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.'
"Some people may say that mentally I was in deep water.
Nevertheless I remember having had these thoughts long before I
knew the truth about birth. I had the idea that air in motion and
water in motion were both somehow connected with birth. Hence
my interest in bubbling springs. The * mighty wind ' was the Holy
Spirit. The story of the Immaculate Conception made me feel quite
certain that I was right :
" * And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee;
therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be
called, The Son of God.'
" Yes, here was God saying unto Mary : Let there be a child.
" One of my dreams has been difficult for me to understand, but
this childhood belief may help to explain a part of it. In the dream
about the three bolted doors, the force which was like a 'mighty
wind,' and passed through them, may have represented this same
birth (impregnation) fancy.
" In another dream, where my brother is leaping from a cliff to
a beach below, the association connected with the word 'beach'
brought to light the fact that one of my chief delights was going
with him to a beautiful spring of water which was covered at high
tide but was pure and fresh at other times. So ' wind ' and ' water '
met (in my thought) and together they brought back to conscious-
ness the early ideas as to procreation, ideas which I had absolutely
forgotten."
Investigation has made it clear, that in this patient's childhood
fancy the conceptions of father, husband, child, mother, were fused
or closely interwoven.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 1 35
The evidence afforded by clinical research makes it seem probable
that, underlying and partly determining these relatively elaborate
and later fantasies, the idea of the power of wind has a more per-
sonal autoerotic root in the unconscious recognition of physiological
processes in which this element figfures. The analysis brought out
the probable existence of this root in this patient's case, and the fol-
lowing incident is of interest, partly in that connection and partly as
binding the various ideas together :
In early adult life the patient had a somewhat serious illness
which required the prolonged attention of an eminent physician in
another city, whom she came to take as a substitute for her father
and to treat with undue confidence. Of the physician's part in taking
advantage of the patient's confidence I will say nothing. A num-
ber of years after the treatment at his hands had ceased she saw
him for a few moments once again, in an almost incidental way, and
on returning home threw herself, fatigued, upon her bed, for a few
moments' rest. In the interests of refreshment she -began taking
deep breaths, and then the feeling came over her that in her deep
inspirations she was somehow entering again into peculiarly intimate
relations with this person. Finally, as she made a long expiration,
it seemed to her that a symbolic birth-act was taking place, and that
she was giving birth to his child.
It is easy to see that an idea of this sort might have occurred
without reference to any specific function of the inspired and ex-
pired air. In the patient's mind, however, this reference did play a
part, and illustrated the fantastic conceptions that have been above
recorded.^*
The next piece of symbolism of which I wish to speak has ref-
erence to the number 3 (or the idea of triplication, or triangulation),
which figured with great frequency in my patient's dreams, in ways
that the following citation will indicate:
^'Both primitive and medieval literature give evidence of widespread
mystical conceptions as to the fructifying power of air or wind; and the
same is true of the fantasies of childhood, which still weave themselves so
strangely around the assumed connection between the taking of food, its
fate within the body and the marvellous power of the feces to fructify the
land In all this process "air" or "wind" plays a part rated as very im-
portant. The subject is too large and too familiar to call for references, but
I would cite, as especially important, Dr. Ernest Jones's paper, Die Emp-
fangniss der Jungfrau Maria durch das Ohr (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, Bd.
VI, 1914). Freud's "Leonardi da Vinci" (now to be had in English) takes
up, in the same sense, the old popular belief in the impregnating power of
the air, with special reference to the impregnation of the vulture.
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136 JAMES J. PUTNAM
Dream 1. The patient is walking on the edge of a steep cliff.
Her brother, clad in bathing costume, comes up behind her and then
precipitates himself on to the beach below. She climbs down pain-
fully and with difficulty to aid him. While trying to rescue him,
three girls, dressed identically, come to her aid, and one of them takes
off and gives her a white sweater, which she puts on her brother.
(Investigation seems to show that these three girls are triplifica-
tions of herself, but as favored with a degree of health and youth
and vigor that had been foreign to her. The white sweater recalls
one actually presented to this brother by his mother.)
Dream II. Three girls of a physical type somewhat analogous
to the preceding seem to be taking possession of a room which the
patient had occupied, in a certain boarding-place. There is some
dispute about the ownership of a watch and pin that had for some
time been hanging on the entry-wall, and the patient snatches them,
saying that they were more hers by right than theirs, and had been
there long before they came.
The girls appear as rivals (i. e., as implying conflicting interests
within herself), perhaps with some homosexual connotation, espe-
cially as the patient had recently broken off a close relationship of
this sort of many years' standing.
Dream III. In a long and elaborate dream, the triplification-
tendency seemed to be illustrated in seven or eight different ways.
A strongly " exhibitionist " tendency comes out in parts of this dream
(as in various others and in numerous experiences). At one point,
three girls, dressed identically in a material of dark blue color (this
color was for her a father-emblem, as having been much liked by
him), sit Turkish fashion on a flat roof, supported on pillars which
one of them climbed, during the dream, in exhibitionist fashion. At
another point a ** barge-like " house was to be seen, with glass sides
(exhibitionism) which entirely covered a small "island" in the
midst of a pond or lake. This structure had three horizontal floors
(or partitions) of the same size and shape; one below, as if resting
on the ground, one at the top, and a third at an intermediate position.
When the patient looked again, these partitions had become heart-
shaped.
Dream IV. In this dream the patient passed through a " culti-
vated, fertile strip of land," lying between two avenues, and in it
twelve palm^* trees grew, arranged in three rows of four each.^^
1* The palm trees occurred here, obviously, with a mainly phallic mean-
ing, while in another dream they carried death connotations. " Death " in her
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 1 37
Dream V. Twelve steps lead up from a partly underground hose-
ment {grocery shop) and her ''double" {her close friend for many
years; see above) is mounting them, followed by the dreamer her-
self. Having reached the sixth step her friend bends backward and
fcdls}^ She, being on the third step, catches her, and carrying her
back into the store places her on some empty ofange-boxes. The
store contains, otherwise, raisins and oranges, but nothing else.
In another dream, the patient's intimate friend (the two being
present at a musical entertainment) makes three attempts to sing
and then collapses to the ground.
Passing by a number of analogous situations in which three ap-
pears as if with some significance of meaning, I will refer to a single
s)rmbol in a long dream (VII) — a roll, namely, of wall paper which
carries a design made up of three ("or five") pale blue^^ wavy
lines, alternating with one red line, the whole design being repeated
many times.
Finally, I give one more dream (VIII) for the reason that the
symbol occurs in it, for the only time, in the definite form of a
triangle.
Dream VIIL " / was awake for a few seconds, then fell asleep
and had another dream. Again I heard a voice. It said: * What
did you have for dinner . . . supper f * To answer the question I
did not mention what I had had for any meal, but I was much sur-
prised to find myself holding a paper bag in my right hand. Into
the bag I saw myself put three triangular-shaped raspberry tarts such
as I had had for breakfast the day before. Strangely enough the
tarts did not drop to the bottom of the bag. Therefore, there was
nothing but air there. I was much astonished. Only a child would
fantasies, however, was closely related to birth, as was shown strikingly in
one ''buried alive" dream, in which she rejoiced to note that the slab of
stone over the grave was raised some inches from the ground.
15 This dream (see below) has interesting homosexual or bisexual fea-
tures, in which the patient and her mother figure.
i« In another dream (VI), into which three does not enter but which may
help to explain the last, the patient mounts a step-ladder behind her mother,
" fearing that she will fall " and wishing to support her, though in fact she
(the patient) comes up so abruptly as almost to push her mother off. Her
mother then bends toward a shelf to place something upon it (other dreams
show the shelf to be a sexual symbol) and reaches over her shoulder, as if
to do the same thing (domination and hostility). Her mother's hand and
wrist, and likewise her own, become invisible (t. e,, she does not like to
think of them — doubtless, in part, for reasons familiar to every psychoanalsrst).
i^Her father's favorite color.
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138 JAMES J. PUTNAM
answer such a question in such a way. I was quite disgusted, and
heard myself exclaiming (in the dream): 'How infantile!^"
To any one whose interest in such matters as are here discussed
goes beyond the simple gratification of curiosity, the study of num-
ber symbolisms is of absorbing interest. At first sight, numbers
seem contrived for utilitarian and scientific ends alone, and it is,
therefore, peculiarly impressive to find them serving as symbols of
emotion, especially sex-emotions.*® But, in fact, the emotional sig-
nificance attaching to numbers as standing for " groups " — ^as, a pair,
a handful, a lot, a crowd (and, by contrast, a single one) etc. — is
obviously very great," and points to a use of numbers that long pre-
ceded the "enumeration" of the relatively educated man. The flex-
ibility and variability of any series of numbers and their interchange-
ability with geometrical forms makes them peculiarly fitted for use
as S3rmbols. Medieval art and ecclesiastical history abound in illus-
trations of this principle, but I will cite only one which for a double
reason is suited to our present purposes. This is the familiar isos-
celes-triangle-shaped figure, representing the virgin or some other
person typifying the Church, who stands draped in a symmetrically
spreading robe, sheltered beneath which are two or more protected
"children."
That numbers and forms (especially the triangle) are used with
sensuous meanings, is, indeed, a matter of common knowledge, and
all students of dreams are, furthermore, aware how almost incon-
ceivably elaborate are the games — ^as it were — which the unconscious
imagination plays with itself, where numbers are the pawns that
stand for persons and situations which, in their turn, represent in-
terests of deep emotional importance to the dreamer. The emotional
interest attaching to numbers may be more especially general, or
mystic, as where — ^to take a trivial instance — peculiar significance
is attributed to the third " shock," or third attempt (" which never
fails"), or to "three" as standing, even among primitive peoples,
for a group, of indefinite size, etc.; or it may be more especially
specific, as where (as is common enough in dreams) a street-num-
ber stands for a certain person, or a special date and number is
made unhallowed by painful experiences. These two sorts of usage
merge and overlap and are often interchangeable, and if I distin-
18 L^vy-Bruhl : Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Soci^^s Inf^rieures,
1910; Von Hug-Hellmuth : Einige Beziehungen zwischen Erotik and Mathe-
matik. Imago, IV Jahrg., 1915, H. i.
^9 Ibid.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 1 39
guish between them at all it is only for convenience sake and to
suggest a possible means of delimination of a large subject.
It is certain that " three " is felt as one of the most significant of
numbers (whether regarded as a numeral, as a figure — ^in its Arabic
or its Roman form — or in the form of the triangle, or as signifying
triplification) ; and also that it has certain well-marked sex-meanings,
both masculine and feminine in nature. Usener's book, " Ueber die
Dreiheit," tells with laborious care what a part this number has
played in ancient and medieval history, but seems to find for it no
further psychological significance than as representing the indefinite
form of multiplicity, or an intensification to which duplication leads
up. In Christian and in Pagan art, the representations of the deity
appear doubled or tripled, in identical forms, as in several of my
patient's dreams.
Eugene Tavenner's interesting paper^® on "three" as a magic
number in old Roman times, gives another series of related data
which help to show how widespread the use of this symbol is, as a
group-designation, and prepare one to believe that where the number
three comes in dreams it is to be thought of, not as a case of fanciful
happening but as evidence, one must believe, partly of the grip of a
strong and universal interest of a specific sort, partly of a t3rpical
mode of working of the mind.
But Tavenner goes no further in his explanation of this tend-
ency than Usener, whose theory he cites.
In essence, this theory is historical and not psychological, i. e.,
not brought into relation with the genesis of the mental interests
and functions. Valuable though it doubtless is, the explanation
offered by these writers needs to be supplemented in two directions,
which the words " genesis of the mental functions," if taken broadly,
will serve to indicate. Tavenner says :
" It is a well-known fact that certain Brazilian and other savage tribes
count on the joints of one finger, bringing their systems of definite
numbers to a close with two. Under such conditions the notion of
three is indicated by the expression two one, four by the expression two
two, etc., while the number which has the third place in such savage
systems means not three but many.^^ 'Our Indo-Germanic ancestors,'
continues Usener, 'must have remained for a long time at the stage
><> Three as a Magic Number in Latin Literature. Trans, of the Am.
Philological Assn., Vol. XLVII, 1916.
21 Taylor (Primitive Culture, 3d Amer. ed., i, 242 ff.) and other students
of anthropology give ample evidence of the present existence among back-
ward tribes of number systems ending in two and three.
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140 JAMES J. PUTNAM
where they counted on the joints of one finger in this way. The further
advance to four, five, and the decimal system seems to have been both
rapid and easy/ For this reason the numbers two and three made a
very lasting impression in their popular speech, their religion, their folk
k)re, and their magic. We have only to recall our own expression that
' two is a company, three is a crowd,' and the German saying, ' Einer ist
keiner, zwei viele, drei eine Menge,' to convince ourselves that there was
really a time when, to our ancestors, three meant an indefinitely large
number, beyond the Hmits of the definite number system. So also
Diels has reached the conclusion that the number three derived its pecu-
liar magic value from the fact that it was " die ursprtingliche Endzahl
der primitiven Menschhcit.** This seems to be the most probable ex-
planation of the origin of the belief in the great magic power of the
number three."
The direct evidence as to the meaning of the symbol given by
my patient was but slight, but this fact, in itself, is of a certain in-
terest. She felt its intensification-value — its "many" or mani-
folding significance — and still more, though entirely vaguely, its
sensual or erotic significance, though she could not or did not trace
this out. Knowing, however, as we do, that the triangle has long
stood as a sign both of masculinity and femininity (and sometimes,
as here, of both at once), this failure (in so far as it is not to be laid
at my door) points to the repression of an erotic emotion pressing
for recognition, and it is doubtless in this direction that the interest
in the symbol is largely to be sought. Its use may not be confined
simply to the revealing and concealing of a sensuous feeling or emo-
tion. . In my patient's case its emplo3mient hints, I think, at a recog-
nition of ambisexual tendencies on her part, in which respect it is
classifiable with several other very striking symbols to which ref-
erence cannot be made in this paper.
Not only is this true, but there is another very important mean-
ing to which "three" inevitably points — namely, in standing for
father, mother, child, that group so deeply important for every per-
son's life, as each one's personal experience verifies and as the his-
tory of the Holy Family brings out in striking form.
The other universally valid connotation for the number three
relates to its significance as recalling the logical and philosophical
mental processes, of which, as I believe, every person is subcon-
sciously aware, not so much through his intelligence and reason as
through his feeling. Three legs, or feet, are not more typically es-
22 Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Philosophie, X (1897), 232; and Festschrift f. Th.
Gomperz, p. 8^ n. 3.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS I4I
sential, or typically adequate, for the support of a table or a stool
than is the syllogism for the founding of a reasoned-out conclusion.
Neither is this sort of logical process — with which the famous
Hegelian triad may, for present purposes, be grouped — ^more im-
portant in its place than is the kindred fact that every typical men-
tal process implies an assertion, a negation of this assertion as in-
sufficient and imperfect, and then a return to the universal positive
which every one feels within him, as to a never-to-be-exhausted
source of help in the further search for truth. Analogous to this,
again, is the implication of subject, object, and process as a triad
essential to many mental acts, as in the statement of a proposition,
and the threefold aspect (of reason, feeling and will) under which
the mind is so frequently described.
Finally, there are interesting social relationships of a triadic sort
that are not fully covered by the formula " Two's company, three's
a crowd," or by the conception of the family as a special group. It
will be remembered that there are many men, as Freud has pointed
out, who are capable of love yet who cannot develop this capacity to
the full extent, except in the presence of a rival. Of course, as
originally described by Freud, the " love " in question was conceived
of as of a rather sensuous sort, but I believe that the situation is
more broadly significant than this idea would indicate. Many ex-
cellent people fail to see favorable elements in various relationships
in which they are chief actors, until another's praise of their good
fortune, or the danger of losing some advantage accruing to them
through another's rivalry, forces this recognition on their notice.
Another highly interesting triadic relationship, negatively anal-
ogous to the last mentioned, is that described by Royce^^ under the
name of the "community of interpretation." The relationship of
two persons (diadic) contains, as Royce points out, certain elements
of special danger or of weakness, due to competition, misunder-
standing, lack of confidence, etc. But if then there comes in a suit-
able third person (the insurance agent, for example, who inter-
mediates between the individual beneficiary and the public, as repre-
sented by the company) a peculiarly satisfactory basis of under-
standing may become established. A child may — one might suppose
— establish such a relationship between disagreeing parents.
The question is now pertinent : Is there any reason to believe that
any of these more elaborate meanings were in my patient's thoughts ;
and if so, how did they bear upon the problem, why she found so
great enjoyment in the number "three" as a symbol?
28 See, especially, War and Insurance. Macmillan, 1914.
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142 JAMES J. PUTNAM
With regard to the first points, I can say that the lady in ques-
tion has always shown a strong interest in logical processes of all
sorts, and particularly in the kinds of relati<mships here in question.
Also, in my opinion, it is fair to consider that such processes,
which every thinking man finds more or less congenial, imply tfie
existence of innate mental qualities which every one can claim some
share of and which no one can escape the self-imposing obligation
to employ. Of course, however, the degree to which they are em-
ployed varies very widely.
It is highly probable that, when it comes to seeking, instinctively,
for sensuous regressions — ^as in dreams — ^the forms of sensuousness
which are (to some persons) peculiarly gratifying (just because
peculiarly at variance with convention) are those in which motives
and feelings which contain elements of (real) spiritual or intellectual
aspiration are utilized in the service of erotic cravings. There is a
spice of adventure in every protest, even if instinctive and uncon-
scious, against taboos of every sort — ^as for example, in the use of
oaths. Janet makes this clear in his excellent descriptions'* of the
obsessed patients who feel compelled, in church, to imagine them-
selves desecrating the sacred and consecrated utensils for purposes
commonly thought of as unclean*^ or vile. It is doubtless the con-
trast that attracts, in the case of the acts inspired by the anal com-
plex, and the root may be the same in both cases. Indeed, the prin-
ciple involved is so well recognized that I should not have referred
to it but for its interest in connection with these number dreams.
It is an interesting fact that this patient's younger brother, when
between three and four years old, made great use of a similar tend-
ency, after the following fashion: Evidently wishing — ^in fantasy —
to intensify his own divergent feelings through objectification and
projection, he imagined himself represented by three boys to whom
he gave highly original names, which I must not here reproduce but
will designate by the numbers "One," "Two" and "Three," re-
spectively, while " Four " may stand for him, himself. " Two" was
a boy of mischievous tendencies, "Three" a good boy, whereas
"One" was a boy whose tendencies were neither good nor bad.
For what then did "One" stand? It is improbable that this very
young child worked out any of the philosophical or psychological
issues here at stake, but it is the belief of my patient, his sister, that
**Les Obsessions et la Psychasthenic. Felix Alcan, cd., Paris, 1903.
^^The fact that the German officers yielded, largely, to this temptation,
during their stay in the chateaux of France, is of considerable interest.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS 1 43
their germs may well have been present to his mind. " One " was
certainly not colorless for him, as it might have been supposed it
would 'be, and in trying to define what position it did occupy it is in-
teresting to discover that** the word " neuter," to which the negative
meaning of " neither," " sexless," etc., is usually given, is really to
be thought of as implying " both," and especially both masculine and
feminine. An analogy would perhaps be the third term in the
Hegelian dialectic, or the "conclusion" which strives to embody
what there is of value in both of two discordant or discrepant
propositions. Or, again, to take a biologic simile of genetic interest,
one might think of the " undiflFerentiated " cell, which, through divi-
sion, is destined to create two other, more highly specialized cells, of
diverging functions. However this may be, these three personages
played a considerable part in this boy's life. When he had done any-
thing wrong he would throw the blame from himself on to " Two,"
who would then be banished from the group, which was thus re-
duced to "Three," "One" and himself.
But then, partly through the influence of his mother, who entered
into the game but used it to reinforce her discipline, it would be
made to appear that " Three " should not and would not stay in this
diminished group because it was evident that he himself was really
guilty in company with " Two " and could not shift his responsibility
so easily. This idea, that the virtuous " Three " should be banished,
distressed him very greatly and he would instantly decide to be good
himself and thus bring back " Three " and also " Two." No matter
what happened "One" always remained, like the "organ point"
which gives unity to a series of changing chords. An analogous
unity is that which preserves the changing "personality" intact
through change, or which expresses itself in the concept " the many
and the one."
In further discussion of the meanings of " three " as a symbol,
my patient suggested that it had for her the signification of " com-
pleteness," as implying, for example, " all the love there is," all the
possible amount of intensification and the like.*^
It is obvious that this idea coincides largely with that of Usener
and Tavenner, in whose conceptions three stands for a s)rmbol of an
indefinite " many." But it means, perhaps, not only many in the
**As I am informed by Dr. J. S. Van Teslaar, on the basis of careful
stndy of the subject
«^ Cf. the dream into which the house enters, which was built with three
heart-shaped superimposed floors or parallel, horizontal partitions.
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144 JAMES J. PUTNAM
sense of an indefinite "lot," but signifies, as has been said, "com-
pleteness," so many that one could not work for more, the three
legs of the stool which support it firmly, the unity of masculine plus
feminine, implied in " neuter " or in the concept of hermaphroditism
regarded as "true."
It has been suggested that the extremely common use of triplifica-
tion in heraldry (three spears, three boars' heads, etc.) conveys this
idea of completeness or perfection, and my patient believes that it
figures as a basis for the use of the symbol, in her case, alongside of
the erotic connotation.
A consideration of the mixture of motives implied in these
various possible sorts of uses of the number and sjrmbol "three"
exhibits as probable the presence of psychological tendencies on my
patient's part, not alone in one direction but in two opposite direc-
tions, and it is the establishment of this proposition that is the main
purpose of this paper.
I believe, namely, that one should recognize as important not
alone the regressive tendency, the seeking of opportunities for
sensuous enjoyment of a subtle sort — implying a species of defiant
prostitution of a possible higher meaning in the interest of a con-
cealed lower meaning — in this use, even in dreams, of symbols of
double or multiple signification but also the tendency to accept and
acknowledge as valid the " better standard which is departed from."
It is as if the patient was to say : " I admit my obligation to support
the actual and ideal social standards from which I regress, even
though I seem, in regressing, to repudiate them. In fact, I derive
a peculiarly acute satisfaction, of a sensuous sort, from the very fact
that I deny, for the moment, their prior and transcendent claims."
The next symbolisms to which attention will be called relate to
the always important subject of theft, where the motive of mere
acquisition is practically absent. A far better designation of this
form of thieving (which would embrace most instances of so-called
kleptomania) would be " symbolic," and the object of its analysis
should be to discover the infantile roots of the desire symbolized
and to get — in accordance with the foregoing argument — ^such hints
as one can of the double or multiple tendencies at work and the rela-
tive value of each.
It is reasonable to believe, as has been asserted, that for some
cases the mere secret handling of forbidden objects carries with it
something of the gratification and excitement that attends more
obvious forms of autoerotic handling, which are thus recalled. I
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS I45
cannot reject the possibility that this element was present here. It
is likely to have played no great part, however, if only because the
number of the thefts was so small, and certainly it pales in sig-
nificance when compared with certain other influences, namely, the
longing for self-assertion (sought partly in compensation, partly for
its own value), and the desire to possess and own her father and her
brother, to whom she was so passionately devoted.
The occasion of the stealings and the objects stolen were, in
brief, as follows: (i) a pear from a fruit-stand in childhood, taken
in bravado and immediately thrown away; (2) "three" doses of an
effervescent medicine belonging to her brother — ^trifling theft enough,
but sufficient to call down reprobation from him and of special in-
terest for special reasons; (3) certain books; (4) two pocket-books
from a store; (5) some bits of lace; (6) a belt, too large for her;
(7) certain small pearl buttons.
Two dream-thefts were also of much interest. One involved the
(symbolic) taking of her sister-in-law's children, and the other an
analogous theft, perhaps indirectly related to this, but in which she
herself figures as the person stolen from. Finally, there was a sig-
nificant temptation to take certain brass hinges and other door-
furnishings which had curious associations.
I. The pear theft is described by the patient herself as follows:
" To have the upper hand gave a kind of exultation. It was a form
of excitement filled with fascination. Not far from my father's office
there was a fruit store. Sometimes the owner stood in the doorway.
Sometimes he was half concealed in the darkness of the room. But
wherever he might be, he kept an eye on the fruit stand in front of the
store. Just because he was so afraid that something would be taken
from him, for that very reason I longed to snatch a pear or an apple
and dash out of sight before he could seize me. I did not want the
fruit. I wanted to *beat him at his own game.' He made me think
of an ugly spider ready to spring on some one. I would take good care
that he did not catch me (but she longed to have him do so, as he had
caught other children with whom she longed to be, in a sense,
identified").
28 Cf. the " pursuit " dreams above. The pleasure of pursuit and even
of capture recalled childhood experiences (as is so common) with a favorite
uncle in whom she saw virtually her father, and also the memory of not-
infrequent fallings through tripping and the like, as a consequence of her
poor eyesight, which were made sweet for her through the pettings and con-
solings from her father himself, by which they were often followed.
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146 JAMES J. PUTNAM
The right moment came; in a twinkling I was off with a pear, — in
another twinkling I had thrown the trophy away. At first I felt quite
fine over my exploit But then the New England conscience came into
play — ' It is a sin to steal a pin. It is a Jin to steal a pin.' I never con-
fessed the sin, however. For a long time, whenever I passed that store,
involuntarily I quickened my steps."
2. The effervescent-salts theft contains, in the patient's estima-
tion, a meaning of the following sort : from her earliest years and
as an outcome of her Bible studies, this imaginative patient had had
special fantasies about procreation and bubbling springs, a portion
of which have already been described in her own words with special
reference to her longing to be identified with her brother, who occu-
pied much the same place with her father in her longings. The
drinking of her brother's "bubbling spring" of effervescent salts
signified, for her unconscious fancy, this gratification of her long-
ing for identification with him. In itself (i. e., regarded as a piece
of gross appropriation of property), the theft had no meaning and
corresponded to no need.
3. The book theft was symbolic of her hunger of mind and soul,
and, in particular, expressive of her longing for her father's stronger
and stronger love, since the reading of books was his breath of life
and constant habit, and closely associated with him. It was (though
probably not in an uncomplicated sense) like the taking of a flower
associated with him. But the element of secrecy and the breaking
of bonds to which she felt allegiance — and which for his sake she
broke— doubtless played its part.
None of the articles taken were kept by the patient The books
were given away to persons whose possession of them had a par-
ticular interest for her, and they were replaced by others that would
have a greater value, as she thought, for the second-hand book
dealer from whom she took them.
The articles nun^bered 4 and 5, which were taken up but never
carried away at all, seem to have had the following (principal) sig-
nificance: No. 4 (the pocket-book)" and No. 5 (the baby lace)
point to her longing for a child, a probability which is intensified by
the fact that she had been reading and was engaged in translating a
novel entitled " Lace," referring to a present of lace from a lover to
his lady.
No. 6 (the too large white belt) suggested pregnancy.
No. 7 (the small pale blue pearl buttons) hint at the same mean-
2» A not uncommon dream-symbol in the sense of the vagina.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOLISMS I47
ing, partly because of the special significance of shoe-buttons (with
reference to the well-attested meanings of foot and shoe) testified
to an interesting piece of symbolism occurring in a dream which I
have not space to give.
The brass hinges, lock and door fastenings, which she was
tempted to take under peculiar conditions, were positively felt to
have the same significance with the buttons. They refer, namely, to
the possible closing and opening of doors to her own mansion, in a
sense made clear in the ogre dream and the wind dreams (" pursuit "
dreams) which I reported earlier. At about the same time that this
dream was had, the patient was under the compulsion mentioned at
the outset, of doubly locking her own chamber-door.
I have thought it worth while to mention all these matters be-
cause of the peculiar interest which always attaches to the evidence
that theft experiences are not always — perhaps far less often than
they seem — tiie vulgar performances of an anti-social personage.
For my patient — ^to accept her own estimate — ^the thefts were tinged
with the excitement that always accompanies a reaching outside of
the conventional and socially lawful, toward a reward felt to belong,
by natural law, to him who has the boldness to demand his felt due.
It is a case of the individual against the conununity ; and while psy-
choanalysts and patients, as citizens, should feel themselves as much
the guardians of the community as any other men, yet they are also
in a position to comprehend with peculiar force the longings and
cravings of the individual. In my patient's case these cravings were
strongly for maternity and for her mother's rights in her father and
her brother. These points are brought out yet more strongly by the
following two dreams which testify, inferentially, to the strength
of the social motives which were set aside or sacrificed for the in-
tensification of the sensuous and personal motives.
The dreamer saw herself on the street in swift pursuit of her
sister-in-law, and a moment later was tearing a pair of ear-rings
from her ears. The dreamer then turned and was herself pursued
by her sister-in-law, who ran after her presumably to take the orna-
ments away. There was a house further up on the right-hand side
of the street. The front of the house looked as if it had been struck
by a bomb. The front basement-wall zvas no longer there; the place
was open to the light of day. The dreamer and her sister-in-law ran
to this house. The steps ascending to the front door were partly
destroyed; the drawing-room was in ruins, one window being broken
and many bricks having fallen out. On the floor above, in the front
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148 JAMES J. PUTNAM
bedroom, there ivas only a Small opening in the wall, something like
a port-hole in a ship. In this room the sister-in-law's mother was
sitting. The dreamer wondered if she would find her own mother
there too. When the sister-in-law arrived at the house, she ran up
the front door-steps and on further until she reached the second
floor. She did not see that the dreamer had gone slyly into the base-
ment and was concealing thf jewels in a box, covering it first with
{so-called "invisible") pink-and-white plaid cloth and then with
white ashes.^^ The dreamer was in fear of being discovered. When
the danger was over, she started to rush up the broken door-steps
after her sister-in-law, but paused half way and, instead of going
further, sent a volley of harsh words up the stairway. With that
she woke in a great emotional tumult, and was saying to herself two
or three times in close succession: ''Oh, I hope I shall never speak
like that to anybody. It was dreadful."
Later the patient wrote :
" Recently two dreams have disquieted me because they were moving-
pictures of petty thieving. Then, last Tuesday, while in a store, there
came over me a strong impulse to take certain things (brass hinges,
rivets, note-books, and candy). I did not yield to the impulse. I left
the place as quickly as possible, yet the appearance of such a desire (in
the open, so to speak, and not merely in dreams) gave me a distinct
shock and a self- fear which has not subsided.
" What did it mean? What did that strong impulse signify? It said
as plainly as words: // / cannot steal children, I will steal something
else. If I may not have what I want, I will take what I can get.
" I am glad I understand this. I think, too, that a love of excitement
is behind many an impulse to steal — particularly where the things are
not use afterwards."
The other dream about stealing was as follows :
"/n my native city a steep street was seen. On the right side it
had very high houses; on the left, an embankment surmounted by a
low stone wall. {There is, in reality, no such street there.) An ob-
server of a * moving-picture,' I saw myself walking up the street.
One second, I was alone; the next instant two little girls and a stout,
dark-complexioned woman appeared at my right. The children were
dressed alike, in white blouses and dark blue skirts: the woman was
entirely in black. Her face seemed familiar to me. Her age was
somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five years. She had taught
the children to steal. One little girl was eight, and the other eleven
80 Possibly a hint at anal memories.
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INTERPRETATION OF CERTAIN SYMBOUSMS 1 49
years old. These children were too close to me for comfort, and she
kept at their right. We formed a straight line across the sidewalk;
so there was but little space between myself and the gutter. They
started, all three, to go up the incline with me. Suddenly the woman
vanished. At the same moment I knew the children had stepped
behind me and taken money from a bag which I was holding under
my left arm.
"Note. — This was the small black bag which I use every day.
When I have more than a dollar in that bag I carry it as just de-
scribed. When there is only small change, I let my hand drop to my
side.
" The children took bills, and not coin. Then they, too, were no
longer visible — children and bills.
" Since I intended to go on a journey, I had an extra reason for
wishing to recover my money. Therefore I turned, went down the
hill to the raUroad-station, sought out the station-matron, and then
she accompanied me back up the street whence I had come. She
had on a long white apron completely covering her dress, and she
wore a white cap. She walked at my left, as we hurried along, look-
ing on all sides for the children {idea of concealment). They were
not to be seen anywhere. I was chiefly occupied in examining the
windows of the houses on our right. At last, high up, on the top
floor of one of the apartment-houses, the woman in black looked
down on me for a fraction of a second and then peered at me from
behind the ' half -blind' which covered half of the window offering
this fleeting view of the enemy. With this glimpse of her the dream
ended."
In setting forth the rather wide-reaching generalizations which
have occupied many pages of this paper, I have been led, primarily,
by the idea that not s)mibols alone but all emotions have two faces
and consequently that one should not define a person's desires as
" retrograde " or sensual, without noting that they are this eminently
by contrast with others of a different sort, and in a sense that the
psychoanalyst at least is bound to understand.
In fact, all that I have said applies rather to the edification of
the physician than — directly — to the edification of the patient. It
may be necessary, or desirable, to confine the psychoanalytic inquiry
to a certain group of repressions of which — it should be said — the
physician can more or less accurately prophesy the nature, and which
the patient — reversing, as all patients are prone to do, the path of
the repression — will sooner or later bring to light.
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150 JAMES J. PUTNAM
But it should be clearly known that the patient's mind contains
also a variety of other data which he is not likely to bring to light,
yet which it is vitally important for him to recognize, if this can
but be brought about without detriment to his progress, as significant
sources of motive. Such matters are certain inherent "moral ob-
ligations," which every one who will listen to his own conscience
will find that he feels, first, as a member of the " community," in a
widening sense; next as a virtual member of an ideal community,
or — ^if one will— of the universe. I will waive the question whether
the psychoanalyst ought to bring these matters definitely to the
patient's notice (though I will say that I believe one reason this ob-
ligation is not felt is that the first mentioned obligations are not be-
lieved to exist as such) ; but it is certain that the psychoanalyst can-
not be thoroughly competent for his task unless he has them in the
background of his mind. And I -believe that the time will come and
is at hand, when it will be found that the physician can often act in
both ways as helper to his patients, without either the loss of self-
respect or failure to perform both tasks adequately. The universe
is not, as I believe, founded in logical " reason " alone, much less in
"scientific" reason as that word is usually understood. Moral in-
tuition also plays its part, and probably discovers its right to do so
because of inherent necessities and not solely because of utilitarian
adjustments.
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CHARLES DARWIN— THE AFFECTIVE SOURCES OF HIS
INSPIRATION AND ANXIETY NEUROSIS^
By Edward J. Kempf, M.D.
ST. EUZABETH's hospital, WASHINGTON, D. C.
The psychoanalytic study of these particular attributes of Charles
Darwin's personality must necessarily be rather abruptly circum-
scribed. To do thorough justice to Darwin's personality one ought
to read everything he published and all the family and personal his-
tory that can be had and present the material in an analytical biog-
raphy. It is hardly necessary to eulogize Darwin's greatness in
order to make the analytical study of his inferiorities and compen-
sations acceptable to the hero-worshipping public.
Charles Darwin's contributions to the progress of civilization and
welfare of humanity stand second to no man. He has done more
for the liberation of human thought than the combined careers of
Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon and other imitators,
and his character needs no defense. It is of great value to kno\^ow
he succeeded in refining the autoerotic cravings inherently active in
every individual, and in sublimating the father's repressive influence,
thereby making it possible for the affective cravings to create the
long series of original researches into the mechanisms of nature.
It is quite probable that no male can be capable of consistent orig-
inal thinking who has not succeeded in freeing himself from the
parent's resistant domination. As to how much Darwin's sexual
life played a part in his scientific curiosity may be estimated from
tMI fact that he laid supreme emphasis upon the mechanism of sexual
selection as a determinant for the survival of pleasing attributes,
hence variations in structure and movement. He says, in his De-
scent of Man, that the German naturalist and philosopher Haeckel, was
the only scientist whose writings showed that he fully appreciated
* The formula upon which the analytical study of Darwin's personality
and his creations is made is the origin and nature of his wishes, the nature of
the environmental resistance, and the resultant behavior :
Primary Wish + Subsidiary Wishes ( manifest )
Primary Wish + Subsidiary Wishes (repressed)
X Resistance (environmental) = Behavior.
151
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152 EDWARD J. KEMPF
the significance of sexual selection, to which now may be added the
Freudian school of psychobiologists.
Another indication of Darwin's interest in the sexual functions
is to be seen in the titles of his books, such as The Descent of Man,
and Selection in Relation to Sex, The Effects of Cross and Self Fer-
tilization in the Vegetable Kingdom, On the Various Contrivances by
which Orchids are Fertilized, and On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection.
In this analytical study several discussions of Darwin's sexual
life are, of necessity, frankly made. No one who reads Darwin's
letters can help but duly appreciate the splendid manner in which he
sublimated his sexual cravings, keeping himself pleasant, unirritable,
appreciative and grateful, which, of course, is not characteristic of
the sexually discontented.
Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin,* was a
physician, poet and naturalist. He wrote Zoonomia (signs by which
animals are known and may be named). His feelings in regard to
nature study may be estimated from his introductory phrase, " The
whole is one family of one parent." He was a very studious theorizer
but not very practical in his scientific work, and Charles Darwin, when
an elderly man, came to be disappointed in the excess of theory and
the scantiness of facts in his book. Like most men who devote most
of their love to creative thinking, he seems not to have been a very
practical father, due, also, perhaps, to a " certain acerbity or severity
of temper" (p. 6), because his second son, Erasmus, became a sup-
pressed, psychopathic personality. The latter was quiet, retiring,
had eccentric, self-indulgent interests, was, in some respects, bril-
liant, never married, and committed suicide at forty while in what
seems to have been a state of "incipient insanity" (p. 8).
His third son, Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin,
became a physician upon his father's command. Even though he
detested the work his father gave him no choice (p. 12). Despite
his "hate" for the work he developed a large country practice.
There are indications that Robert and his father, Erasmus Darwin,
did not understand each other in the matter of profession or finances,
for his father " brought him to Shrewsbury before he was twenty-
one years of age and left him twenty pounds, saying : * Let me know
when you want more, and I'll send it to you.' His uncle, the rector
2 The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin by Francis Darwin. The in-
formation in this article is taken from this work and the numbers following
quotations, as (p. 8), refer to the pages.
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CHAKLES DARWIN 1 53
of Elston, afterwards, also sent him twenty pounds, and this was
the sole pecuniary aid which he ever received" (p. 8), which seems
to imply that although he needed money he had to depend upon a
relative. This fact may have had quite a genetic influence upon his
attitude, later, toward his son Charles, whom he rebuked for care-
lessly spending money while at college. It is worthy of considera-
tion that Charles Darwin, in turn, was unusually generous with his
son, Francis, about some of his careless debts contracted while at
college. Francis Darwin says: "My father was wonderfully lib-
eral and generous to all his children in the matter of money, and I
have special cause to remember his kindness when I think of the
way he paid some Cambridge debts of mine — ^making it seem almost
a virtue in me to have told him of them." The attitude of Charles
Darwin toward the matter of his son's college debts stands out in
quite striking contrast to the attitude of his own father. Charles
Darwin, in money and business matters, was extremely careful and
exact. "He kept accounts with great care, classifying them, and
balancing at the end of the year like a merchant." "His father
must have allowed him to believe that he would be poorer than he
really was, for some of the difficulty experienced in finding a house
in the country must have arisen from the modest sum he felt pre-
pared to give. Yet, he knew, of course, that he would be in easy
circumstances " (p. 98) .• From this statement, it seems that Charles
Darwin, although he knew he had sufficient resources, was unable
to use them more freely than he did because he felt constrained by
his father's influence to deny himself. An indication that his father's
attitude had caused him no little sorrow may be seen in the carefully
considerate manner in which he made the debts of Francis seem
" almost a virtue." This affective restraint, which Darwin imposed
upon himself in order to keep peace with his father, which when
associated later with other facts, gives us one important indication
as to the mechanism of Darwin's chronic anxiety.
To return to Darwin's parents. His father was a man of un-
usual insight into human nature, for he practised the present psycho-
anal}rtic principle of inducing a free affective readjustment in his
patients as a method of treating the distress caused by affective re-
pression — anxiety. Charles Darwin says: "Owing to my father's
power of winning confidence, many patients, especially ladies, con-
sulted him, when suffering any misery, as a sort of Father-Con-
fessor. He told me that they always began by complaining in a
* Italics mine.
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154 EDWARD J. KEMPF
vague manner about their health, and, by practice, he soon guessed
what was really the matter. He then suggested that they had been
suffering in their minds and now they would pour out their troubles,
and he heard nothing more about the body " (p. 12) . Dr. Robert Dar-
win also found that the sexual forces played a critical part in the at-
tainment of happiness or misery, which is obvious from the follow-
ing statement : " Owing to my father's skill in winning confidence,
he received many strange confessions of misery and guilt. He
often remarked how many miserable wives he had known" (p. 12).
Other characteristics attributed to his father by Charles Darwin
are : " The most remarkable power which my father possessed was
that of reading character, and even the thoughts of those whom he
saw even a short time. We had many instances of the power which
seemed almost supernatural (p. 12).* Darwin follows this comment
with three illustrations. The first one was how his father never,
" with but one exception," made an unworthy friend, and, in this in-
stance, a clergyman, who was " little better than an habitual swind-
ler," was soon discovered. The second was the loaning of twenty
pounds to a complete stranger who had lost his purse and promptly
proved reliable, and the third was the detection in an insane young
man, who accused himself of all the crimes under heaven, that he
was guilty of a heinous crime. " His sympathy gave him unbounded
power for winning confidence;" he was "the most acute observer
whom I ever saw"; and "The wisest man whom ever I saw."
(Italics are inserted to emphasize the superlative use of superla-
tives.) In order to successfully conceal undesirable wishes and
emotions from a father having such unusual qualities for detecting
them it would necessarily require one to most assiduously repress
them from consciousness. It is quite probable that Darwin's in-
terest in the expression of the emotions in man and animals was
aroused by his father's capacity to read secrets of behavior from
the manner in which emotions are expressed.
Robert Darwin married Susan, the favorite daughter of Josiah
Wedgwood of Etruria, a very close friend of his father's, and it is
quite probable that her esteem for her father-in-law was greatly
enhanced by her own father's admiration for his intelligence. She
seems to have had, according to a miniature and an account of her
by friends, "a remarkably sweet and happy face," expressive of a
"gentle, sympathetic nature" (p. 9). She is said to have enjoyed a
most benevolent regard from her father-in-law (Bettany), and,
* Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 55
through this aflFective influence, probably became deeply fascinated
by his poetical, scientific curiosity, and much interested in his theories
as to the causes of variation and evolution of life. She was very
fond of flowers and pets. The tameness and beauty of her pigeons
were the admiration of her friends. (The origin and variations of
domestic pigeons form a most important part of the "Origin of
Species.") The sincerity and frankness of her attitude, no doubt,
gave her son Qiarles a distinct impression about the things in life
that fascinated her. She was very sympathetic and seems to have
had a protracted, wearisome illness which caused her death when
Charles was but eight years of age. Her charming interest in
nature gave him, it seems, a fixed inspiration, a wish to solve the
riddle that fascinated his lovely mother. It must have been her
romantic fondness for flowers which inspired her son to search
there for the secret of her fascination, because, when he attended
Mr. Case's school at eight, he had already begun to collect " all sorts
of things,'' shells, seals, franks, coins, minerals, and " tried to make
out the names of plants f'^ (Collecting was a well-developed charac-
teristic of several of Darwin's uncles.)
The Reverend W. A. Leighton, who was a playmate of Charles
Darwin's at this school, remembered his bringing a flower to school
and saying that "his mother had taught him how by looking at the
INSIDE of the blossom the name of the plant could be discovered''
(p. 26). (Naipes are usually given in science, and also ordinarily,
according to the genetic origin or dynamic nature of the object — ^to
know the secret of the name is to know the secret of the child's or
flower's origin.) The boy, Leighton, whose childhood curiosity and
inspirations were later considerably gratified by becoming a botanist
of well-known reputation, tried to discover the secret. He says:
"This (secret) greatly aroused my attention and curiosity, and I
inquired of him repeatedly how this could be done, but his lesson
was, naturally enough, not transmissible" (p. 26).
Whatever was the exact source of the fantasies exchanged by
the two boys, it was certainly a budding curiosity about genesis
(sexual), because Darwin, in his autobic^aphy, says, at 67: "One
little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my mind,
and / hope that it has done so from my conscience having been after-
wards sorely troubled by it ; it is curious as showing that apparently
I was interested at this early age in the variability of plants! I told
another little boy (I believe it was Leighton) that I could produce
B Italics mine.
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156 EDWARD J. KEMPF
variously colored polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with
certain coloured fluids, which was, of course, a monstrous fable,
and had never been tried by me "• (p. 27).
Why should Darwin, fifty-nine years later, with his fine insight
into the naturalness of immorality in children, write this confession
of an act of immorality conunitted at eight and apologize for it as a
"monstrous fable" that simply would not fade with time. Most
unforgettable incidents of childhood which later become painful
memories are, in some manner, associated with a sexual transgres-
sion, and it is the severity of the struggle to refine the sexual in-
terests that gives prominence to the transgressions of the past, like
an old scar on a highly polished surface. The self-refinement tend-
ency in Darwin is definitely revealed in his comment, " I hope that
it has done so from my conscience having been afterwards sorely
troubled." This eight-year-old boy's fantasy, that he could produce
a variation in the colors of flowers by watering them, was told at
the age when children are inclined to wonder seriously about the pos-
sible genetic qualities of their excreta, and the painful attributes of
the " monstrous fable " was not in the story as retold at sixty-seven,
but in the associations it had at eight It is quite probable that
Darwin's fancy that he could cause variations in the colors of
flowers by watering them was suggested by the manner in which
they gradually faded and died after he had repeatedly urinated upon
them (not an uncommon experiment of boys), and the fancy was
told as a child's recompensative wish. The urinating on the flowers
probably had the value of being a fertilization curiosity. (See the
fertilization curiosities in Darwin's list of publications to be given
later.)
Whether or not Darwin's mother actually propounded her en-
chanting riddle to her boy is not quite so important as the fact that
he said she did, showing how keenly his wishes relished the fancy
that she had revealed to him the one secret of life that fascinated
her — the secret, which, if read, would reveal the origin and crea-
tion of life and — ^himself. Children from seven to ten are usually
passionately fond of riddles. It is the trial and error method of
finding the answer to the onmipresent riddle as to their origin.
Soon after this innocent exchange of confidences with her boy, the
beautiful mother died — went on a long journey into the night.
At ten, this boy was still collecting minerals with much zeal, still
searching for the answer to his mother's riddle and her wish that he
* Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 157
could know. He says : " All that I cared about was a ntyr-named
mineral" (p. 31). We must not forget Zoonomia.
During the next seven years, in the classical schools, he was an
indifferent student, and earned the reputation of being more diffi-
cult to teach than the average boy. The cause of this is evidently in
the fact that his sponsors persisted in trying to make him learn
stuff for which his affective cravings had an aversion. Criticism
and rebuke seemed to fail as arousing stimuli, as did also changes of
schools and teachers. In his autobiog^phy, Darwin estimates the
value of his schooling in the following phrase (p. 40) : " During
the three years which I spent at Cambridge (studying theology) my
time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned,
as completely as at Edinburgh (studying medicine) and at school."
The personal history of Darwin shows that after his mother's
influence nothing pleased him like the study of nature and never for
a day does he seem to have abandoned his quest. No doubt this
adolescent speculator upon the secret of life was subtly, but de-
cidedly, impressed by the family's romantic interest in the nature
of the recognition the grandfather's theories of evolution were
winning from the great scientists of England. At the time of the
following critical incident his enthusiasm about the merits of his
grandfather's studies was at its height. He was admiring
" greatly " the theories in the book Zoonomia when accidentally his
conviction was fixed by the enthusiastic remarks of a hero-friend.
The remarks were made imder those subtly impressive circumstances
which make them irresistible because they suggest an attractive
solution for an uncomfortable affective conflict. He and his older
brother, upon his father's insistence, were attending Edinburgh
University in preparation for the practice of medicine, his father's
and grandfather's profession. Both boys had insurmountable re-
sistance to medicine, but the father persisted, it seems, in sending
them to this sort of school, because the classical school had been a
miserable failure and he wanted a son to practise medicine with
him. Charles Darwin, though inspired to learn the names and
secrets of biological and geological objects, was utterly distressed
by names and words in the form of languages. For him it was
like marrying the wrong sister. No little anxiety was felt by Dar-
win's earnest father as to what his son's future as a man might
be, and this pressure, no doubt, made the solution of a career most
desirable for all concerned if it could only be found. His mother
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158 EDWABD J. KEMPF
had innocently, therefore the more irresistibly, named her wish for
her boy's destiny, and his father's wishes, that he should study some
profession, only diverted him from the quest. While in this restless
affective dilemma, the solution came in a most fortunate manner
for the future of civilization.
Adolescent Darwin, age seventeen, was walking with maturing
Doctor Grant, several years his senior. He says, in his autobiog-
raphy : " I knew him well ; he was dry and formal in manner, with
much enthusiasm beneath the outer crust." (This boy had achieved
one of the supreme delights of a boy's life; he had overcome the
reserve of his hero and was learning, through sharing confidences,
some of his impressions on the secrets of life and what works of
men aroused his admiration. In his autobiography, Darwin ex-
presses disappointment, even when an old man, that this hero of his
youth did not write more and develop his interests fuUy.) "He
one day, when we were walking together, burst forth in high admira-
tion of Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent
astonishment, and, as far as I can judge, without any effect on my
mind. I had previously read the Zoonomia of my grandfather, in
which similar views are maintained, but without producing any
effect on me. Nevertheless, it is probable that the hearing rather
early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured
my upholding them under a different form in my Origin of Species.
At this time I admired greatly the Zoonomia" — as well as Doctor
GrantJ
This confidential revelation, by his impressive hero, of a similar
interest in the secrets of the evolution of life, firmly approved the
soundness of Darwin's sacred wish of childhood, to learn the secret
of nature by looking " inside " the flower. Although he began his
scientific career as a geologist, as he grew older he reverted to his
first wish and became more and more interested in the secrets of
fertilization and variation of plants and animals. Finally, he gave
the world the following answers to his mother's sacred riddle :
Books'
On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, at fifty.
On the Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized
by Insects, at fifty-three.
^Italics mine.
^ This is by no means a complete list of Darwin's publications.
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CHARLES DARWIN 159
The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, at
fifty-nine.
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, at sixty-
two.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, at sixty-
three.
Insectivorous Plants, at sixty-six.
The EflFects of Cross- and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable
Kingdom, at sixty-seven.
The DiflFerent Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species,
at sixty-eight.
The Power of Movement in Plants, at seventy-one.
Papers
Observations on the Structure and Propagation of the Genus
Sagitta, at thirty-five.
Vitality of Seeds, at forty-six.
On the Action of Sea-water on the Germination of Seeds, at
fifty.
On the Agency of Bees in the Fertilization of Papilionaceous
Flowers, at fifty-seven.
On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties ; and on the Per-
petuation of Varieties and Species by Means of Natural Selection,
(Darwin and Wallace) at forty-nine.
On the Agency of Bees in the Fertilization of Papilionaceous
Flowers, and on the crossing of Kidney Beans, at forty-nine.
Do the Tineina or other Small Moths suck Flowers, and if so
what Flowers, at fifty-one.
Fertilization of Vincas, at fifty-two.
On the Two Forms, or Dimorphic Condition, in the Species of
Primula and on their Remarkable Sexual Relations, at fifty-three.
On the Three Remarkable Sexual Forms of Catasetum triden-
tatum, at fifty-three.
On the Existence of Two Forms, and on Their Reciprocal Sexual
Relations, in Several Species of the Genus Lineum, at fifty-five.
On the Sexual Relations of the Three Forms of Lythrum Salt-
carta, at fifty-five.
On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants, at fifty-six.
On the Character and Hybrid-like Nature of the Offspring
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l60 EDWABD J. KEMPF
from the Illegitimate Unions of Dimorphic and Trimorphic Plants,
at fifty-nine.
Notes on the Fertilization of Orchids, at sixty.
The Fertilization of Winter-flowering Plants, at sixty.
Fertilization of LeschenauUia, at sixty-two.
Pangenesis, at sixty-two.
Fertilization of the Fumariaceae, at sixty-five.
Flowers of the Primrose Destroyed by Birds, at sixty-five.
Sexual Selection in Relation to Monkeys, at sixty-seven.
The Scarcity of Holly Berries and Bees, at sixty-eight.
Notes on the Fertilization of Plants, at sixty-eight.
A Biographical Sketch of an Infant, at sixty-eight.
Fertility of Hybrids from the Common and Qiinese Goose, at
seventy-one.
The Sexual Colors of Certain Butterflies, at seventy-two.
Movements of Plants, at seventy-two.
The Movement of Leaves, at seventy-two.
The Parasitic Habits of Molothrus, at seventy-two.
On the Modification of a Race of Syrian Street-Dogs by means
of Sexual Selection, by Van Dyck, with a preliminary notice by C.
Darwin.
To the Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same
Species he made the following significant comment: "No little dis-
covery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out of
the meaning of heterostyled flowers. The results of crossing such
flowers in an illegitimate manner, I believe to be very important as
bearing on the sterility of hybrids."*
It would be most undesirable to leave the impression that the
affective transfer to Doctor Grant, through the support of his child-
hood wishes, alone made it possible for Darwin to overcome the
wishes of his father, that he should become a physician or a minister,
and devote his life to the particular work which gratified his
mother's innocently placed wish. The friendship of Prof. Henslow,
which, he says, " influenced my career more than any other" (p. 44)
and, of the geologists, Sedgewick and Lyle, and others, besides the
contributions to science which he read, furnished the medium
through which his inspiration could work satisfactorily. The essen-
tial point is the fact that before he met Henslow, his affective trends
had become quite definitely settled, and it was now only a matter
of finding the proper associations and material with which to work.
B Italics mine.
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CHABLES DARWIN l6l
From nineteen to twenty-two he attended Cambridge to train
himself for the ministry because, it seems, his father and sisters had
decided that, since he would not study medicine, nothing else was
desirable. Fortunately, they were not too resolutely persistent,
and Darwin's yearnings were tenacious and vigorous enough to
endure the disconcertions of classical literature until he met Pro-
fessor Henslow. Professor Henslow, he says, was a man " whose
knowledge was great in botany, entomology, chemistry, minerology,
and geology" (p. 44) and who later became a minister. Perhaps
this complex personality, as a life-long friend, saved Darwin from
floundering imder his father's resistance, after he had started on his
course. Henslow's knowledge of biology gratified the wish to please
mother, and his ministerial interests gratified the wish to please
father. Later Henslow's inducement enabled Darwin to make a neat
sublimation of the father's wishes.
At twenty-two, in Cambridge, he says (p. 47) : " I read with
care and profound interest Humboldt's Personal Narrative. This
work, and Sir J. Herschel's Introduction to the Study of Natural
Philosophy, stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most
humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. ^*^ No
one of a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much as these
two." (His affective needs were ready for the books and these
men, and he assimilated the scientific knowledge that helped to
satisfy the ardent wish of his childhood with "burning zeal.")
Darwin's affective needs resisted his father's influence that he
should study medicine or theology, even though he had obediently
consented, upon his father's instigation, to become a clergyman, but
they accepted Henslow's suggestion that he should study geology
with enthusiasm. This course satisfied the childhood wish to know
the names and secrets of minerals and made life sincerely worth
while. Had it been necessary, for, say, psychiatric reasons, to take
Darwin's life history at this time, his father would probably have
conscientiously said that he was not a good student, indifferent to
the serious interests of life, a sport, ratcatcher, card player, drinker,
and waster of time, and more obstinate and self-willed than his
brother. His brother, whom he called " poor old Philos " and " poor
old Ras," had, by this time, completely submitted to the father's
wish.
The origin of the subsidiary wish to travel, which also urged
Darwin to make the important voyage of the Beagle, he attributes
^<^ Italics mine.
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l62 EDWARD J. KEMPF
to " early in my schooldays a boy had a copy of the Wonders of the
World, which I often read and disputed with the boys about the
veracity of the statements ; and I believe that this book first gave me
a wish to travel in remote countries, which was ultimately fulfilled
by the voyage of the Beagle'' (p. 31). The voyage was addi-
tionally attractive because it enabled him to answer the wish of his
childhood, to know the truth of the serious claims of his playmates
and the author. In other words, his Journal of the Voyage of the
Beagle improved the story of travels which he read in his childhood.
When the opportunity for the voyage of the Beagle came,
through the kindness of Henslow, his master in science, he says his
father "strongly objected, adding the words, fortunate for me, 'If
you can find any man of common sense who. advises you to go I will
give my consent"* (p. 50). This vigorous protest, no doubt, was
aggravated by Darwin's past three years of sporting indulgence at
Cambridge, which he, himself, later, characterized as ''time worse
than wasted." His father had often rebuked him for his sporting
proclivities and plainly said he was seriously afraid his son might
become a regret to the family. Darwin's father had probably not
forgotten the tragedy of his own brother's suicide and was at a loss to
know how to influence his son. He had persisted in sending him to
Edinburgh to study medicine and, when he refused to become in-
terested, he had sent him to study theology at Cambridge, only to
see him persistently waste his opportunities.
His son's method of wasting time and money, through sports,
card-pla)ring and drinking companions, has every attribute of being
his manner of protesting against the impatient attitude of his father,
who was an abstainer. Their affective resistances had become such
a barrier that neither was able to satisfactorily influence the other.
We learn that Darwin's sisters had become the medium of exchange
of certain opinions between father and son from the fact that the
father learned through his daughters that his son Charles was not
interested in medicine. After the father had expressed his distrust
of the voyage of the Beagle, Charles wrote a letter declining the
opportunity and promptly went on a shooting trip to Maer. It was
one of the interests his father objected to because he cared more
for it than a profession.
The father's inability to see his son's zeal for scientific research
in this vitally important request, as well as in the selection of an
undesirable course of training for both of his sons, strikingly con-
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CHAKLES DARWIN I63
trasts with the persistent manner in which Charles Darwin later
attributed to his father the qualities of being "the wisest man" he
ever saw and a man having "almost supernatural" powers of
reading character. Additional facts, to be more fittingly presented
later, shows decidedly that these conflicts greatly influenced the
pathological nature of Darwin's later submission to his father and
the over-compensation of gratitude which he developed. The letters
relative to the Beagle opportunity show how extremely eager he was
to go and how seriously he considered the opportunity, but also, how
entirely, because of his affection for his father, he was dominated
by the latter's opinion.
In a letter to Henslow he wrote: "My father, although he
does not decidedly refuse me, gives such strong advice against
going, that I should not be comfortable if I did not follow it"
(p. 169).
"My father's objections are these: the unfitting me to settle
down as a clergyman, my little habit of seafaring, the shortness of
the time, and the chance of my not suiting Captain Fitz-Roy . . .
if it had not been for my father I would have taken all risks . . .
there certainly could not have been a better opportunity."
In the postscript occurs a sentence that clearly reveals Darwin's
utter affective dependence upon his father's approbation and pleas-
ure : " Even if I was to go, my father, disliking, would take away all
my energy" (p. 170).
After Darwin had resigned himself to the loss of this wonderful
opportunity he promptly went to the home of the Wedgwoods —
his future father-in-law's. Apparently, there, they all talked it over,
for the next day he wrote a letter to his father. It begins rather
timidly :
" My dear Father — I am afraid I am going to make you again
very uncomfortable. But, upon consideration, I tfiink you will
excuse me once again, stating my opinions on the offer of the voy-
age. My excuse and reason is the different way all the Wedgwoods
view the subject from what you and my sisters do.
" I have given Uncle Jos what I fervently trust is an accurate
and full list of your objections, and he is kind enough to give his
opinions on all . . . may I beg of you one favour, it will be doing
me the greatest kindness, if you will send me a decided answer, yes
or no? If the latter, I should be most ungrateful if I did not im-
plicitly yield to your better judgment, and to the kindest indulgence
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I64 EDWARD J. KEMPF
you have shown me all through my life; and you may rely upon
it I will never mention the subject again" (p. 171).
One can hardly help but be deeply impressed by this almost
tragic appeal that this maturing male (twenty-two) makes for
parental consent to his freedom of thought and behavior. Twice in
the same letter he refers to the delicate question of idleness : " the
time" (on the voyage) "I do not think, anyhow, would be more
thrown away than if I stayed at home " and " I must again state I
cannot think it would unfit me hereafter for a steady life." (Such
earnest pleas as this, although he was a "ratcatcher," show how
seriously he was interested in life, if only the controlling powers
would let him be free.)
His father's list of objections reveal his attitude about his in-
ability to direct his son's career.
" (i) Disreputable to my character as a clergyman hereafter.
" (2) A wild scheme.
" (3) That they must have offered to many others before me the
place of Nattu^list.
" (4) And from its not being accepted there must be some seri-
ous objection to the vessel or expedition.
" (5) That I should never settle down to a steady life hereafter.
" (6) That my accommodations should be most uncomfortable.
" (7) That you (Dr. Darwin) should consider it as again chang-
ing my profession.
" (8) That it would be a useless undertaking (p. 172)."
The objections i, 2, 7, and 8, the most important, indicate that
the father's resistances to naturalists' wasting time were probably
the result of his economic stresses as a student and practitioner due
to his own father being a rather indifferent provider, probably be-
cause of the enormous amount of time he sacrificed in unremunera-
tive theorizing about nature. Qiarles Darwin says his " father's
mind was not scientific, and he did not try to generalize his knowl-
edge under general laws, yet he formed a theory for almost every-
thing which occurred," which indicates that some resistance pre-
vented him from grouping his theories like his father did.
To return to the objections — ^Josiah Wedgwood replied in a letter
to Darwin's father, in which he took up each point separately and
supported the wishes of his future son-in-law. The first objection
is interesting in that it reveals what enlightened Englishmen thought
of naturalists in 1831. "(i) I should not think that it would be in
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 65
any degree disreputable to his character as a dergyman. I should
on the contrary think the offer honorable to him ; and the pursuit of
Natural History, though certainly not professional, is very suitable
to a clergyman."
Darwin's father, fortunately, was not so obstinately cruel and
self-centered as to resist this final plea from his son and relatives.
He consented in "the kindest manner," and the enthusiasm with
which Darwin reacted is revealed in several letters to his friends, in
which such phrases as the following are to be found: (In r^ard to
his liking his captain) " I am sure it will be my fault if we do not
suit. What changes I have had. Till one" (o'clock probably)
"today I was building castles in the air about hunting foxes in
Shropshire, now llamas in South America. There is indeed a tide
in the affairs of men " ; (in regard to the sailing) " What a glorious
day the fourth of November will be to me! My second life will
then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my life *'^^
(p. 187) ; (to Henslow, whose "protege" he liked to consider him-
self to be) " Gloria in excelsis is the most moderate beginning (of
t?he letter) I can think of;" (to his friend Fox he wrote) "Every
now and then I have moments of glorious enthusiasm, when I think
of the date and cocoa-tree, the palms and ferns so lofty and beauti-
ful, everything new, everything sublime." When repressive in-
fluences are removed the affective response immediately rises with
enthusiasm and exuberance. Smoky, noisy London became, for
the first time in his life, " very pleasant, hurry, bustle and noise are
all in unison with my thoughts ; " and the crowded little ship became
" the most perfect vessel that ever came out of the dockyard."
Darwin had a fine capacity for visualizing which is to be seen all
through his letters, and there can be little doubt but that the " second
birth " he referred to meant that he proposed to remain a naturalist,
marry Emma Wedgwood and devote his " second life " to one long
"birthday for the rest of my life."
The vigor of Darwin's interest in science, as a young man, cer-
tainly varied as his father's wishes forced him from the studies that
gratified his affective attachment to his mother, and it was fortunate
that his uncle was quite well aware of the family situation.
Darwin writes in his autobiography : " The voyage of the Beagle
has been by far the most important event in my life and has deter-
mined my whole career ; yet, it depended on so small a circumstance
as my uncle (future father-in-law) offering to drive me thirty miles
^^ Italics mine.
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l66 EDWARD J. KEMPF
to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a
trifle as the shape of my nose " (p. 51). The captain of the Beagle
disliked the shape of Darwin's nose, believing that it indicated weak-
ness of purpose and energy. He, however, was persuaded to accept
the offer for service because of his zeal. This his father had failed
to appreciate. (This complicated, decisive incident is comparable
to an accidental association of mechanical or chemical devices that
sometimes saves a man from a life of fruitless, painful striving after
an inaccessible object by giving him a practical medium through
which the wish may, at least, struggle freely for gratification.)
Darwin, as a psychological problem, would be only half con-
sidered, if we did not include an analysis of his chronic anxiety,
which lasted over forty years, and attempt to estimate the nature of
his affective repressions and his manner of dealing with them,
because, in many essential respects, Darwin's difiiculties were of the
type that often become extremely destructive to the personality.
It is quite probable that, had his father suppressed the voyage of
the Beagle, it would have ruined his son, because the submission
would have prevented the frank sublimation of his mother-attach-
ment. This mechanism, perhaps in more active form, is frequently
the most prominent factor in many dementia praecox cases.
The first indications that Darwin had a psychoneurotic tendency
came out, as it would be expected, upon the first strenuous demands
for adaptation when accompanied by home- or love-sickness, which
bothered him greatly. Such symptoms as the following, occurring
in a student, would lead one strongly to suspect an autoerotic diffi-
culty that had not been completely mastered. Besides cardiac palpi-
tation and anxiety he had other neurotic symptoms.
In a letter written September 6, 1831 (p. 180), to his sister,
Susan, is the first significant reference to his personal difiiculties.
The unconscious manner in which the thoughts are associated to-
gether is quite important. He begins with a series of requests for
wearing apparel, and, when he reaches the request for a little book,
" If I have got it in my bedroom — * Taxidermy '." He adds : "Ask
my father if he thinks there would be any objection to my taking
arsenic for a little time, as my hands are not quite well, and I have
always observed that if I once get them well, and change my
manner of living about the same time, they will generally remain
well. What is the dose? Tell Edward my gun is dirty. What is
Erasmus' direction?""
1^ Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 67
The arsenic tonic for the defective hands, of which he is unduly
conscious while trying to make demonstration of his best qualities
in order to be accepted for the voyage, is interestingly associated
with the queer observation, which is given so much importance by
the " always," that if he once got them well, that is, under control,
and changed his manner of living about the same tim^, they gen-
erally remained well. This sort of phrase is enigmatical in almost
any sense unless it reveals the manner in which he had mastered
the natural onanistic curiosities of youth. The associations of
taxidermy — ^arsenic — ^hands (tonic), show how frankly Darwin per-
mitted his thoughts to associate, hence, tonic, defective hands, defec-
tive gun and Erasmus should be considered to have been written
in the same trend of thought. Erasmus was biologically not a well-
devloped heterosexual type, was not creative, retired while a young
man and never married.
It is very interesting, in this connection, that, three days later,
Darwin again wrote to the same sister (p. 182) : " Captain Fitz-Roy
first wished a naturalist, and then he seems to have taken a sudden
horror of the chances of having somebody he should not like on
board the vessel." In the previously quoted letter in the paragraph
following the arsenic requests, he says "from Captain Fitz-Roy
wishing me so much to go, and, from his kindness, I feel a pre-
destination I shall start." (Fitz-Roy seems to have been about
twenty-three at this time and the two were to share quarters to-
gether. Later, while at sea, Fitz-Roy developed a negativistic attitude
toward Darwin which almost disrupted the voyage. At sixty-seven
Darwin said he " was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate
terms which followed from our messing by ourselves in the same
cabin" (p. 51). This indicates that Fitz-Roy was inclined to be-
come irritable under the strain of sexual suppression). From his
autobiographic comments, Darwin apparently mistook Fitz-Roy's
reference to his sensuous nose as his true reason for not taking him
on the journey. It is quite probable that the astute Doctor Darwin
was well aware of his son's personal difficulties, if we consider the
manner in which he read the sexual difficulties of his patients,
which Darwin characterized as "supernatural." This may have
been the true basis for the fear that it might ruin him for the min-
istry. Homosexuality is a serious problem among seamen. In the
same letter, Darwin shows that he met the emergency and mastered
himself completely for he says, following his comments on his suc-
cessful bargain for new pistols and a gun, and Fitz-Roy's fine guns.
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l68 EDWARD J. KEMPF
that he would not need to take arsenic. The final arrangements
had then been made and the slightly regressive tendency was re-
lieved. According to some psychiatric notions, the neurotic and
cardiac symptoms, plus a suicidal uncle, would have branded Dar-
win as a constitutional inferior failing to accommodate under stress.
It was not imtil five weeks after his letter, in which he men-
tioned Fitz-Roy's uneasiness, that he bared the yearnings of his
soul to this stranger, instinctively assuring him that all was well by
the splendid sublimation that, on the day of sailing *' my second life
will then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of
my life." The nature of the fifty-two years of married life that
followed the voyage show clearly how well Darwin meant exactly
what he said.
No doubt Fitz-Roy and Darwin had no occasion to lose their
esteem for one another. The voyage lasted about five instead of
three years during which time Darwin suffered severely from sea-
sickness, nausea, vomiting and dizziness, but the enormous amount
of work he did, and the accuracy of his journal, which has been
incorporated in the Harvard Qassics,* show how splendily he sub-
limated his aflFective cravings.
While on the voyage, he had a serious illness which his father
was unable to diagnose from a description of the symptoms, but it
can hardly be assumed to have left a debilitating effect, because,
after the voyage, while working at his specimens, he wrote of his
good health and spirits.
Doctor W. W. Johnson," in his article on The 111 Health of
Oiarles Darwin: Its Nature and Relation to His Work, in which
he covers the symptoms and the physical stresses of the voyage,
and his intense method of work, concludes that the illness was
" chronic neurasthenia."
Dr. G. M. Gould in his Biographic Qinics reviews the case of
Charles Darwin, and, after discussing Doctor Johnson's diagnosis,
concludes that the ill health was due to "eye-strain." Both men
seem to have either overlooked or given little importance to the
anxiety about his hands that Darwin complained of before the
voyage or to the aflFective problems involved.
The indications, many of which have been collected in the fol-
lowing discussion, are that, if we will consider the nature of Dar-
win's work, what it meant to him, what he anticipated it would
mean to civilization and the excited criticisms it would arouse, the
^•American Anthropologist, Vol. Ill, 1901.
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 69
attitude of his father, and his manner of working, it is quite prob-
able that he suffered from an anxiety neurosis due to consistent af-
fective repression. The nature of the affective repression will be
discussed after other important personal traits of Darwin and the
symptoms of his illness have been fully covered.
About two years after his return from the voyage of the Beagle,
he began to be troubled by becoming occasionally "unwell." I
could find no definite account of an organic disease imtil he was an
old man, and none of his physicians, including his father, seemed to
consider an organic lesion as the cause of his illness. Many hints as
to the symptoms and nature of his anxiety neurosis may be found
scattered throughout the biography published by his son, Francis,
and in his letters and autobiography. Some of the more definite re-
marks are here collected together because they indicate the nature of
the anxiety neurosis, and, from an analysis of his compensations and
methods of obtaining relief from anxiety, we are enabled to acquire
an insight into the nature of his affective struggle and the determi-
nants of his final course of living.
In the critical years between his return from the voyage of the
Beagle (twenty-seven) and his marriage (thirty) to settling at
Down (thirty-three), Darwin passed through his final affective
reformation. He was inclined to reflect deeply on the subject of
religion, read books on metaphysics which indicates that he still
conscientiously considered the ministry and "the subject was much
before his mind " (p. 274) but he says :
"Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last
complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress." During
these years the first important experience of becomii^ " unwell " is
recorded and the later course of his anxiety indicates that it was a
reaction to his efforts to adjust himself for his career, his father,
and his mating. (It is important to recognize the fact that indi-
viduals having too strong an affective attachment to one of their
parents, often experience an unfathomable anxiety when they at-
tempt to mate, because in the mating the individual tends to repress
the affective interests that do not idealize the love-object, and this
repressed affect produces anxiety through its struggles to break
through the resistance so as to find its own love-object.)
He married at thirty and lived in London, but at thirty-three
he retired to the restful seclusion of Down. As he grew older, he
isolated himself more and more from social intercourse. The summer
before his retreat to Down he went alone on one more geologizing tour
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170 EDWARD J. KEMPF
to North Wales and this was the last time he tried to climb a moun-
tain. What final resolutions and emotional changes Darwin ex-
perienced on this trip are not recorded by him, but shortly after
this he retired to Down, where he became a chronic invalid and
his wife-mother became his devoted nurse. Francis Darwin fit-
tingly says: "No one, indeed, except my mother, knows the full
amount of suflFering he endured, or the full amount of his wonder-
ful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him
for a night ; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours
might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable
annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or
prevent him becoming overtired, or that might alleviate the many
discomforts of his ill health." "For nearly forty years" (almost
throughout his marriage) " he never knew of one day of health like
the ordinary man and thus his life was one long struggle against
the weariness and strain of sickness. And this cannot be told with-
out speaking of one condition which enabled him to bear the strain
and fight out the struggle to the end"^^
Another most important fact must be added because it enabled
him to play in nature study according to his wishes. His economic
independence was established through his father's good will. It
must be recognized that his mothering-wife and his economic inde-
pendence, as a secure source of protection for his family and him-
self, made it possible for him to endure his chronic aflFective con-
flict because he could thereby avoid the aggravations that usually
arise when an individual, having serious affective repressions, is
required to adapt himself to the demands of a self-indulgent mate
or the stresses of competitive business. These two facts probably
saved Darwin from utter ruin long before the Origin of Species
could have been published.
During the critical period of affective renunciation of orthodox
mysticism for the more serious and more sacred truths of Nature,
from twenty-seven to thirty, Darwin's interest changed in other
important respects. He discovered, "unconsciously and insensibly,
that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one
than that of skill and sport"" (p. 53). He also became definitely
convinced of his own place in nature and the significance of his
theory of evolution. He says (pp. 75, 76) : " As soon as I had be-
come, in 1837 or 1838 (age twenty-eight or twenty-nine) convinced
1* Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN I7I
that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief
that man must come under the same law. Accordingly I collected
all notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, and for a long
time without any intention of publishing." His cautiousness shows
how clearly he foresaw the criticisms that would be hurled at him
because of the pain his theories would arouse in others. His
ability to recognize this, of course, could only have come from the
pain he himself experienced when he quietly renoimced his ortho-
dox wishes as to the future of man. His next sentence shows how
clearly he apprehended the nature of the illegitimate claims ortho-
dox minds are tempted to make in the name of religious righteous-
ness. He says: "Although in the Origin of Species the derivation
of any particular species is never discussed yet I thought it best, in
order that no honorable man should accuse me of concealing my
views, to add that by the work * light would be thrown on the origin
of man and his history*" (p. 76).
His first child was bom when he was thirty, and he says : " I at
once commenced to make notes on the first dawn of the various ex-
pressions which he exhibited, for I felt convinced, even at this
early period, that the most complex and fine shades of expression
must all have had a gradual and natural origin." (In this respect
Freud's contribution, that the sexual functions evolve gradually as
a variation from nutritional functions, is neither a new nor a rad-
ical departure.)
It is worthy of consideration that Darwin's father, although he
hated medicine, submitted, and, from having " no choice," followed
his own father's profession. He was unable to accept the implica-
tions as to the origin of man that were taught by his father's theories
in Zoonomia, that all forms of life were " one family of one parent."
Besides this resistance, he strongly inclined that his son Charles,
after he had refused to become a physician, should accept, en masse,
the dogmas of the Oiurch of England and become a country clergy-
man. (This seems to have been an unconscious expression of oppo-
sition to Zoonomia.) These factors indicate that the father's re-
sistance to his son's yearnings to work on the same problems that
had interested his grandfather had a far deeper emotional deter-
mination than probably any of the family allowed themselves to
consider. That Oiarles Darwin's consecration of himself to science
was a most sacred resolution is firmly supported by the zeal,
patience, and care with which he worked, as well as such State-
ments as this, in his autobiography; "I remember when in Good
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172 EDWAKD J. KEMPF
Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego, thinking (and, I believe, that I
wrote home to that eflFect) that I could not employ my life better
than in adding a little to Natural Science. This I have done to the
best of my ability and critics may say what they like, but they can-
not destroy this conviction " (p. 73). The delicate manner in which
father and son had to adjust their wishes is indicated by the state-
ment regarding the intention that he should become a clergyman:
" Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formally given
up, but died a natural death, when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined
the Beagle as naturalist."
It is permissible to infer, therefore, that Darwin's consecration
of himself as a naturalist for the welfare of humanity, besides
gratifying and beautifully sublimating his mother-attachment, also
gratified his father's desire that he should religiously consecrate
himself to the welfare of humanity, which is remarkably like the
mechanism of the sacrifice of the devoted Son, Christ, if we con-
sider certain other facts.
At thirty-three, incidentally the year of the Crucifixion, he re-
tired from London to seclude himself for the remainder of his life
in the isolated, rural home of Down. That he literally wrote his
studies of nature with consecrated devotion is obvious from his life
of self-denial, the careful exactness with which he maintained his
working schedule, Sundays, as well as week-days, the enormous
output of material, some seven thousand (7,000) pages of scientific
research, the "sacredness" with which he regarded the objects of
his study, his humility, and the anxiety he endured lest he should
make a mistake or offend some one.
Probably the same biological cravings that dominate us all and
have insisted upon cherishing the fantasies about the renunciation
of envy by Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and
Burial of all selfish, worldly (sporting) interests, and the conversion
and ascension in life through seeking truth and generously tolerat-
ing censure, urged Darwin irresistibly onward. For the sake of
Man, he endured the taunts and ridicule and curses of the orthodox
thinkers of his time as Christ is said to have endured the persecu-
tions of the orthodox Jew nineteen hundred years ago.
It is a very serious undertaking for a man to consecrate him-
self too severely to his inspirations. Comparatively rugged vul-
garity and mischievousness are emotional exercises that have an im-
portant balancing influence and prevent too consistent repressions
of affective interests of an important type as well as distressing
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CHARLES DARWIN 173
atrophy in others. The personality tends to become psychopathic,
not unlike the seclusive, shut-in, fanciful hero Christ and many of
our paranoid psychopaths, who heedlessly accept their inspirations
without controlling them. Observations of Darwin's behavior from
thirty-three until after seventy show the nature of his anxiety.
Until his marriage, Darwin was very vigorous, fond of sports, and
endured physical hardships on his explorations with little distress.
At forty, he wrote to Doctor Hooker, " ' Everyone tells me that
I look quite blooming and beautiful; and most think I am sham-
ming, but you have never been one of those.' And it must be re-
membered that at this time he was miserably ill, far worse than in
later years" (p. 90). We are told that "His expression showed
no signs of the continual discomfort he suffered," even though,
"when he was excited with pleasant talk his whole manner was
wonderfully bright and animated and his face shared to the full in
the general animation."
"Like most delicate people, he suflFered from heat as well as
from chilliness ; it was as if he could not hit the balance between too
hot and too cold ; often a mental cause would make him too hot,
so that he would take off his coat if anything went wrong in the
course of his work."^^ (This observation gives at least some in-
sight into the delicate affective balance on which Darwin's self-
control swung and how quickly he overcompensated for the fear of
making a mistake or doing something he might regret. He was
pathologically conscientious, exceeding by far the limitations of
common sense. Another example of his hyper-conscientiousness is
to be seen in his letter writing. " He received many letters from
foolish, unscrupulous people and all of these received replies. He
used to say that if he did not answer them he had it on his con-
science afterwards. He had a printed form to be used in replying
to troublesome correspondents, but he hardly ever used it" (p. 97).
Darwin's kindness and appreciation of the interests of others
was so remarkably developed that it must be considered to be more
than a grateful compensation for his burdensomeness to others for
we find it to have been a consistent reaction, even with unknown,
"unscrupulous correspondents," and his publisher, who had never
met him, said: "Everything I did (for Darwin) was right, and
everything was properly thanked for." We also find that in con-
versation he was peculiarly anxious not to become burdensome by
repeating a story twice or by talking when others showed impulses
to do so.
15 Italics mine.
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174 EDWABD J. KEMPF
The spontaneous development of such traits of hyperappred-
ativeness may have, as a compensatory growth, a logical inciting
cause in the fear of being oflFensive, ungrateful, and unappreciative.
The cause of this fear, however, since the soothing nature of his
own family life was almost perfect, must be looked for in a re-
pressed emotional impulse that he had to be incessantly on guard
against and which, perhaps, contributed to wearsring him into in-
validism.
A further indication of his emotional difficulties is to be seen
in his habits. "After dinner he never stayed in the room, and
used to apologize by saying he was an old woman who must be
allowed to leave with the ladies. This was one of the many signs
and results of his constant weakness and ill health. Half an hour,
more or less, of conversation would make the loss perhaps of half
the next day's work. He became much tired in the evenings, espe-
cially of late years, when he left the drawing-room about ten, going
to bed at half-past ten. His nights were generally bad, and he often
lay awake or sat up in bed for hours, suffering much discomfort.
He was troubled at night by the activity of his thoughts, and would
become exhausted by his mind working at some problem which he
would willingly have dismissed. At night, too, anything which had
vexed or troubled him in the day would haunt him, and I think it
was then that he suffered if he had not answered some troublesome
person's letter" (p. loi).*'
This duly confirms the impression that Darwin's careful grate-
fulness and conscientiousness was also a necessary compensation to
protect himself from anxiety, the horrors of sleepless nights, and
uncontrollable thoughts. He dared not become contentious or criti-
cal, because, if he did, even in little conversations, assume the pos-
tural attitude necessary for the successful criticism of another, the
repressed affect literally overwhelmed his self-control and could not
be checked even in the late hours of night. (Darwin often admired
Huxley's wit and capacity to make retorts in discussions. He him-
self lost this capacity which, it seems, naturally occurs when one's
attention is incessantly preoccupied with the details of original re-
search.) This unfortunate man must have suffered excruciating
distress in his later years as his resistance weakened, but, sitting up
in bed, a defense against anxiety and fear, with his wife, who dared
not leave him alone at night, they shared the distress together.
That this disturbance of function had an affective basis and not
!• Italics mine.
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CHASLES DARWIN 1 75
an organic one is indicated, not only by the fine old age he reached,
but by the fact that most people regarded him to be in good health
and shamming, and no organic lesions were found by his physicians
until his last years.
" Any public appearance, even in the most modest kind, was an
effort for him," even the marriage of his eldest daughter caused
undue fatigue and he was tmable to attend the funeral of his father.
He rarely travelled, and, even if he were leaving home for a week,
the packing had to be begun early on the previous day, and the
chief part of it he would do himself. " The discomfort of a journey
to him was, at least latterly, chiefly in the anticipation, and in the
miserable sinking feeling from which he suffered immediately before
the start; even a fairly long journey, such as that to Coniston, tired
him wonderfully little, considering how much of an invalid he
was" (p. 107)."
This sort of fatigue and weakness, due to anticipation, reminds
one of the fatigue that is so disastrous to athletes when they become
overly anxious before a race or game. The extent to which his
anxiety might aflFect him when in society may be gathered from his
comment in his autobiography : " My health almost always suflFered
from the excitement, violent shivering and vomiting attacks being
thus brought on. I have therefore been compelled for many years
to give up all dinner-parties ; and this has been somewhat of a dep-
rivation to me as such parties always put me into high spirits.
From the same cause I have been able to invite here very few scien-
tific acquaintances." So methodieally did he have to live that his
schedule could not be comfortably varied from week-day to Sunday.
It is quite evident that Darwin's constant problem was to pro-
tect himself from anticipations and conflicts because his autonomic-
affective reactions caused severe anxiety and insomnia. It is to be
r^retted because of its great importance to psychology, that the
nature of his obsessive thoughts and dreams under such conditions
were not recorded.
A contributory cause of Darwin's tendency to anxiety and ex-
citement must be recognized in the important fact that he was a
sincere man and his discoveries of the laws of nature, destined to
subtly produce a serious change in religious practices, was severely
criticized by the rampant orthodox with probably as much vindic-
tive tmreasonableness as psychoanalysis is enduring today.
The isolation of himself from the public greatly protected him,
^^ Italics mine.
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176 EDWABD J. KEMPF
but this would hardly be sufficient to protect him from the fear of
making a mistake, or of wasting time, or of offending his father.
The most disastrous eflFects of chronic anxiety are of course
digestive and nutritional, and Darwin's digestive functions were
seriously aflFected. His long, thin legs showed the meagemess of
his powers to assimilate nourishment. It seems that the most satis-
factory treatment he found was "hydropathic," and his biography
indicates that he must have tried many forms of treatment.
Darwin's interests in life were most decidedly eccentric if com-
pared to the interests of the average healthy scientific researcher.
He exercised little interest in business, disliked the theater, and read
little current literature besides his newspaper unless it was asso-
ciated with scientific work. He was very fond of novels, but his
serious interests were devoted entirely to certain genetic problems in
biology and geology. He says : " My chief enjoyment and sole enu-
ployment throughout life has been scientific work; and the excite-
ment from such work makes me for the time forget or drives away
my daily discomfort" (p. 65).**
His manner of working in regard to saving time also shows how
intensely he had compensated for the charge of being a waster
of time in His youth. Francis Darwin says, as to his manner
of working, "one characteristic of it was his respect for time; he
never forgot how precious it was. This was shown, for instance,
in the way in which he tried to curtail his holidays ; also, and more
clearly, with respect to shorter periods. He would often say that
saving the minutes was the way to get work done; he showed his
love of saving the minutes in the difference he felt between a quarter
of an hour and ten minutes' work ; he never wasted a few spare
minutes from thinking that it was not worth while to set to work.
I was often struck by his way of working up to the very limit of
his strength so that he suddenly stopped in dictating with the words,
'I believe I mustn't do any more.' The same eager desire not to
lose time was seen in his quick movements when at work " (p. 121).^®
" He saved a great deal of time through not having to do any-
thing twice. Although he would patiently go on repeating experi-
ments where there was any good to be gained, he could not endure
having to repeat an experiment which ought, if complete care had
been taken, to have succeeded the first time — ^and this gave him a
continual anxiety that the experiment should not be wasted ; he felt
the experiment to be sacred, however slight a one it was" (p. 122).
"Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 177
" In the literary part of his work he had the same horror of
losing time, and the same zeal in what he was doing at the moment,
and this made him careful not to be obliged, unnecessarily, to read
anything a second time" (p. 122).
In regard to saving funds, he is said also to have used the backs
of his note-sheets in order not to waste paper, and, because of this,
many historically interesting sheets were destroyed.
The above-noted characteristics about saving time, energy, op-
portunity and material were decidedly more developed than is char-
acteristic for the average biological researcher. Why? What
strange influence could have determined this trait of character?
As a schoolboy, preceding, during and after adolescence, his
father, besides others, regarded him to be more stupid and lazier
than the average boy and his father was honestly afraid he would
become a source of regret to his family. When he came to his
father for consent and encouragement to make the cherished voyage
of the Beagle, he was derided for utterly lacking common sense;
and, when he returned home, the " sensitive " father did not frankly
acknowledge his interest as a naturalist or his intellectual improve-
ment, and admit that he had been mistaken in his judgment, but,
compromisingly, turned to one of his daughters and remarked:
"Why! the shape of his head is quite altered!" (p. 53). This was
a phrenological observation which approved of the signs of intel-
lectual improvement in his son but did not offer a frank retraction
of his former impression and create an opportunity for honest emo-
tional readjustment. Darwin precedes this comment in his auto-
biography with the significant statement, in the same paragraph,
" I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleas-
ure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that
of skill and sport. That my mind became developed through my
pursuits during the voyage is rendered probable by a remark (quoted
above) made by my father, who was the most acute observer whom
ever I saw, of a skeptical disposition, and far from being a be-
liever in phrenology."
This revelation, an additional reason for Darwin's change of in-
terest from sports to intellectual pursuits, becomes duly significant
when we associate with it the fact that his father when he heard
from his daughters that Charles did not like the thought of becom-
ing a physician, proposed that he should become a clergyman. " He
was very properly vehement against my turning inta an idle sport-
ing man which he considered my probable destination." His fathei
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178 EDWABD J. KEMPF
regarded a voyage with the Beagle as a " wild scheme " and an idle,
sporting adventure. The romantic circumstances in which Darwin's
uncle testified for Darwin's sincerity of purpose, no doubt, put it up
to his honor not to betray his uncle's confidence and, moreover, to
win his beloved father's approbation, lest he should later regret hav.
ing given his consent; hence the gradual change of interest from
worldly sports to higher interests of reasoning as a compensatory
wish-fulfillment.
The enormous collection of observations that Darwin made on
this voyage verified his sincerity and diligence, but it did not win
frank approbation, as the father's behavior showed in the first crit-
ical moment of meeting the returning prodigal, but self-respecting,
son.
His father, though deeply sympathetic, was too sensitive to make
the complete admission that the voyage had proven to be a common-
sense proposition, and that he had been mistaken in his judgment.
Darwin's regard for his father prevented him from showing any
disappointment at the evasive greeting upon his return home after
five years of adventure in the obscure quarters of the earth, but,
in his later years, his "peculiar" use of admiring superlatives in
regard to his father's wisdom and sympathy indicate that it was
probably at that time that all feelings of disappointment in his
father's attitude were resolutely repressed, and the father was ac-
cepted as utterly unable to do a wrong. The disappointment in his
father's judgment was kept repressed by overevaluating his wisdom.
Francis Darwin makes the significant comment : " Qiarles Darwin's
recollection of everything that was connected with his father was
peculiarly distinct and he spoke of him frequently ; generally pref-
acing an anecdote with some phrase as "My father, who was the
wisest man I ever knew'" (p. 10)." " His reverence for him was
boundless and most touching. He would have wished to judge
everything else in the world dispassionately, but anything his father
had said was received with implicit faith (p. 10). In contrast to
this significant, complete acceptance of his father's word (whereby,
of course, all possibility of conflict of opinion or expression of
doubt and displeasure was removed) we find that Darwin said to
his daughter, as she writes it, that "He hoped none of his sons
would ever believe anything because he said it, unless they were
themselves convinced of its truth — ^a feeling in striking contrast with
his own manner of faith" (p. 10) and a direct admission that his
i» Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 79
attitude toward his father was not a healthy one, but the best ad-
justment that he could make under the circumstances of (i) his af-
fective attachment to his father, whereby he was the victim of his
transference, and his love for his mother and her interest, (2) his
economic dependence, and (3) the necessity of avoiding conflicts
in order that he would not be distracted from his researches.
The carefulness with which Darwin adjusted is to be seen in his
" peculiarly distinct " recollection of " everything that was connected
with his father " and his secret difficulties, which passed unobserved
by most people, may be estimated by the following impressions he
had of his father. He was "very sensitive, so that many small
events annoyed and pained him much. He was easily made angry,
but his kindness was unbounded" (p. 18). (If not made angry,
is to be presumed.) Darwin's father seemed to have an unfor-
gettable memory for painful events, because, when he became older
and unable to practise he refused to go driving for the reason that
every road was associated with painful memories. It may be re-
peated here that Darwin also characterized his father as : " His chief
mental characteristics were his powers of observation and his sym-
pathy, neither of which I have ever seen exceeded or even equalled "
(p. 11) and "the most remarkable power which my father possessed
was that of reading characters and even the thoughts of those whom
he saw even for a short time; some instances of his power almost
seemed supernatural" (p. 12). This gives us an idea of the diffi-
culties Darwin must have had in maintaining a submissive posture or
attitude that kept his father comfortable, whereby he renounced all
independence of thought in relation to his father, submissively ac-
cepting his every opinion or statement without reserve and not to
be questioned.
This probably explains the cause of "a fatality" of reasoning
which Darwin had to struggle with. When anyone makes a new
deduction or an original statement or theory, if it is correct, it,
more or less, reflects an atmosphere of superiority of thought upon
himself, and, logically, an implication of inferiority of thought
upon other people. This is probably why lawyers, ministers, scien-
tists, artists, actors, physicians, mechanics, psychoanalysts, ball-
players, debutantes, cooks, i. e., wherever individuals compete for
recognition by displaying the same powers or interests, they have
difficulty in recognizing the superiority of the other individual's
qualifications. The recognition usually comes from those who are
not directly competing. Darwin's theories were more generally ac-
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l80 EDWARD J. KEMPF
cepted by the younger naturalists who were competing with the es-
tablished naturalists, and the older men, who could not reconstruct
their work, refused to accept the theory, preferring their " stand-
ing" rather than the actual truth. The feud between Freud, Jung
and Adler has a similar ingredient as also the fued between psycho-
analists and the old school of psychologists and psychiatrists.
With this mechanism in mind a determinant is to be seen for the
variation in asserting potency displayed by Erasmus Darwin, grand-
father, poet-naturalist and physician, and Robert Darwin, physician,
with theorizing capacities highly developed but not finished, and
Charles Darwin, son, who refused to be a physician but resumed
his grandfather's work on origin of species and rewrote the theory
in an improved, but decidedly individualistic form.
Darwin, by his refusal to become a clergyman, had formally
given his father to understand that he could not accept the Church
of England's and his father's impressions as to man's place in
nature and the expression of his views had to be most consider-
ately made so as not to assert himself heedlessly upon his father's
wisdom. Like all such adjustments between superior officers and
subordinates, the subordinate usually suffers from a retarding tend-
ency to misexpress himself whereby he leaves an opening for the
superior to display the fact that his position is still one of dominant
potency. Darwin complains (p. 80) : " I have as much difficulty as
ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty
has caused me a great loss of time ; . . . There seems to be a sort
of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement in a
wrong or awkward form." The wrong form invites a self-asser-
tion from another, as does also the awkward form offer a chance
for more graceful display of self by another.
There is considerable evidence to show that this person who was
always more or less in mind was none other than his father.
Darwin was completely independent of all other people. This
" fatal " tendency might have deprived humanity of the theory of
evolution, because, although Darwin had quite clearly formulated it
at thirty, he did not present it until fifty-six. His father died when
Darwin was thirty-nine, but the death of the repressive influence
does not relieve the repressed affect so long as the memory is
revered and cherished. It was only upon the "strong advice of
Lyell and Hooker " (p. 70) that Darwin accumulated enough initia-
tive to prepare a volume on the transmutation of species. The
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CHASLES DARWIN l8l
moral support of Henslow, whose protege Darwin liked to consider
himself, and Lyell and Hooker, fortunately counteracted the affec-
tive resistance to free self-expression as a naturalist, which is clearly
traceable to the sincere father's painful manner of yielding to the
voyage of the Beagle.
Darwin compensated for the persistent paining of his father by
elevating him to the revered, immortal height of godliness as the
wisest, most sympathetic, most observing of all men. Such affective
attitudes toward the father, during a psychosis, is always indica-
tive of renunciation of all affective competitiveness with the father
in order to keep peace while secretly love is claiming for itself the
mother's supreme interest.
I have seen this frequently, distinctly illustrated in young men.
In a typical instance, the only son of a devoted, beautiful mother
was in constant anxiety lest he should suddenly die from cardiac
failure or strangulation, who, in a confidential moment, with unmis-
takable pleasure, said that his mother had often told him that she
loved him more than she did his father. He was distressed by
incestuous dreams and the fact that he and his father were always
hostile and unable to understand one another. He could not admit
that they hated one another, and though he wished to love his father
he could not give up stealing his mother's affections for himself.
Such secret intrigue was punished by the fear that he must (ought
to) die and renounce his enmity. The crucifixion or dying of
patients, who feel that they are Christs, is always attended by severe
anxiety. This mechanism has been observed in many of our cases.
It is evident that the affective relationship between father and
son had a most significant, direct influence on the formulation of the
theory of evolution, which will be still further shown later.
As to the repressed affect that distressed Darwin and added
considerably to his invalidism, we are given an indication of its
nature by his methods of obtaining relaxation ; that is, relief from
its pressure.
He says : " Novels, which are works of the imagination, though
not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful delight
and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising
number have been read aloud to me, and I like all, if moderately
good, and if they do not end unhappily — ^against which a law ought
to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into
the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thor-
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1 82 EDWARD J. KEMPF
oughly love, and if a pretty woman, all the better."** In this tend-
ency to become unduly distressed by a novel in which hate and mis-
fortune triumph over love, and, on the other hand, of almost re-
quiring a diet of novels in which some character won the reader's
love, is also a strong indication that Darwin suffered from repressions
of affect, which, if allowed free play, might have pained him in his
devotion for his dominating father. This would have shattered his
own peace infinitely worse than slighting the letter of an unscrupu-
lous correspondent. Rather than permit the recalcitrant competi-
tive craving free play, he incessantly repressed it and never re-
laxed his vigil. This was not only done to keep from paining those he
loved, but also to protect his powers for research by avoiding the
distractions that attend arguments and dissensions. He regarded
himself as being "not quick enough to hold an argument with
any one." " Unless it was a subject on which he was just then at
work he could not get the train of argument into working order
quickly enough" (p. 117), which shows how deeply he became con-
centrated on the problem that he worked on. We must recognize
that his self-isolation, in Down, from nearly all social contact,
enabled him the more to enjoy the free play of his love for biological
research, but the eccentric nature of the self-isolation was made
necessary by the ease with which he lost control of himself in a
conflict. This, in turn, must be recognized as being largely due
to the nature of the repressed affective tendencies. " When he felt
strongly about ... a question, he could hardly trust himself to
speak, as he then easily became angry, a thing which he disliked
exceedingly. He was conscious that his anger had a tendency to
multiply itself in the utterance, and for this reason dreaded (for
example) having to scold a servant" (p. 118).
The above characteristics indicate that Darwin could not trust
himself to conflict with others or protest with anger because the
repressed affect, that was being held back like an uncoiled spring,
tended to become associated with the anger of the moment and it
multiplied too rapidly to be controlled. In this light we can under-
stand why he accepted everything his father said as final.
It is quite reasonable to give considerable value also to the fact
that, although Darwin had to resist his father's wishes until after
the voyage of the Beagle, in order to gratify the affective attach-
ment to his mother, after he had fairly clearly formulated his theory
*® Italics mine.
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CHARLES DARWIN 1 83
of evolution at thirty, about the time of his marriage, it become
obvious to him that the successful proving of his theory lay in his
finding a means for devoting all of his life to study, and this his
father could easily give him if he were so disposed. This fact,
making him that source of nourishment and physical comfort,
emphasized the father's omnipotence, and, in his resignation to it,
Darwin further renounced independence of affective expression in
his relations with him. In one sense, this was fortunate for science
and civilization, because it gave him more freedom for affective
gratification in the one direction that alone could fascinate him, but,
in another sense, it almost ruined his life and spoiled his theory of
evolution. No doubt the accidental fitness of Mrs. Darwin, as a
mate, saved him. In such adjustments between father and son, when
the mate is unsuitable, an incurable mental disaster may result.
The influence of this affective conflict upon his conception of the
origin of species and his formulation of the theory of evolution,
which was to free science of many suppressive influences, is most
interesting. At twenty-nine, when he (p. 68) happened to read for
amusement Malthus on Population, he promptly appreciated the
significance of the universal struggle for existence and the survival
of the fittest, not only because he had enormous collections of such
biological data in mind, that became readily correlated with the law,
but, because it was his personal experience. This evidently was
exactly the mechanism of his own triumphant emotional struggle
with his father's wish. He was experiencing, from, perhaps, ob-
scure emotional sources, the enthusiasm of the survival of the fittest,
because his older brother, whom he affectionately called " poor old
Philos" (philosopher), had yielded to the father's domination and
studied medicine even though he disliked it and retired soon after
graduating, whereas he himself, through his persistence and courage,
had triumphed.
Most significantly, Darwin comments (p. 68) : " It at once struck
me . . . favourable variations (mother's favorite)*^ would tend
to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result
would be the formation of new species," " Poor old Philos " never
married, and that word "poor" unconsciously expressed Darwin's
appreciation of his brother's silent tragedy. He continues further :
" Here then, I had at last got a theory by which to work, but I was
so anxious to avoid prejudice that I determined not for some time
*i Parenthesis mine.
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l84 EDWARD J. KEMPF
to write even the briefest sketch of it." As to how much excite-
ment the reading of Malthus on Population caused Darwin can only
be conjectured, but he at least felt the necessity of guarding himself
against " prejudice."
This cautiousness of Darwin contrasts strikingly with the im-
pulsiveness of Wallace, although both men, when they realized the
biological significance of the survival of the fittest, were decidedly
aided by their own personal experiences. According to the En-
cyclopedia Britannica, Wallace, "while lying muffled in blankets"
(struggling) "in the cold fit of a severe attack of intermittent
fever" (in the isolated tropical Moluccas) "began to think of
Malthus's Essay on Population (which he had read several years
previously), and to use his own words, 'there suddenly flashed upon
me the idea of the survival of the fittest.' The theory was thought
out during the rest of the ague fit, drafted the same evening,
written out in full in the two succeeding evenings, and sent to Dar-
win by the next post." (This inspiration saved his name and
brought him his greatest honor. It was clearly an eflFort to save
something of himself from the onslaught of disease.)
Darwin and Wallace differed in their valuation of certain factors
in evolution, and this can be traced to personal experience and wish-
fulfillment. In their joint essay "On the Tendency of Species to
Form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species
by Means of Natural Selection " Darwin used the phrases " natural
selection . . . which selects exclusively for the good of each organic
being " and " sexual selection " ; whereas, Wallace emphasized " the
struggle for existence."
Even more astonishing is the fact that Darwin, before he had
read Malthus, while contemplating marrying his cousin, his mother's
niece, made the scientific conclusion, which he entered in his diary,
that " selection wcls the keystone of man's success. But how selec-
tion could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature re-
mained a mystery to me,"^* showing clearly that this man, as well as
Wallace, whose scientific formulations are molding the course of
modern civilization, even though rigorously trying to follow pure
reason, was unable to avoid imconsciously founding his sincerest
conclusions upon his own most delicate emotional strivings.
Three years after his marriage, at thirty-three, he first wrote a
brief abstract of his theory, and, at sixty-seven, he made the signif-
22 Italics mine.
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CHASLES DARWIN 1 85
leant comment (p. 68) : "At the time I overlooked one problem of
great importance ; and it is astonishing to me, on the principle of
Columbus and the egg, how I could have overlooked it and its
solution. This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended
from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified.
That they diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which
species of all kinds can be classed as genera, genera under families,
families under sub-orders, and so forth; and / can remember the
very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy
(symptoms of relieved repressions) the solution occurred to me;
and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I
believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing
forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places
in the economy of nature."" What affective resistances prevented
him from seeing a principle which he characterized as being as
simple as Columbus and the egg? The source of resistance may be
quite surely inferred when we consider that the principle means that
progressive divergence is an advantage in itself, because the com-
petition is most severe between organisms most closely related, since
they require the same food and love-objects, hence it could not help
but be associated with the old delicate competition between himself
and his father for his mother's affections. The phrase about modi-
fied offspring tending to become adapted to diversified places in
nature has an interesting example in his marriage to an obvious
mother-image, mother's niece, and their retirement from the world
to the seclusion of Down, of which he says, " few persons could have
lived a more retired life than we have. Besides short visits to the
houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we
have gone nowhere." It seems not even to the continent. For over
forty years, throughout his progressive divergence from his father's
wish, she was his wife — mother — ^nurse.
In 1869, at the age of sixty, Charles Darwin, accompanied by his
daughter, visited the home of his childhood, twenty-one years after
his father's death. The tenant showed them over tiie place and with
mistaken hospitality did not leave the party. " As they were leaving,
Darwin said, with a pathetic look of regret, ' If I could have been left
alone in that green^house for five minutes,** I know I should have
been able to see my father in his wheel-chair as vividly as if he had
^ Italics and parenthesis mine.
** Italics mine.
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l86 EDWABD J. KEMPF
been there before me:" (The green-house, nature study is the point
at which the father and son began a progressive divergence.)
" Perhaps this incident shows what I think is the truth, that the
memory of his father he loved the best, was that of him as an old
man." Mrs. Litchfield, Darwin's daughter, describes him as saying
with the most tender respect : " I think my father was a little unjust
to me when I was young, but afterwards I am thankful to think I
became a prime favorite with him" (pp. lo, ii).
It is interesting that the wish to visualize bis father so vividly,
" as if he had been there," was naturally inclined to recall the image
of him as a dependent old man, and no longer the father with " the
art of making one obey him to the letter" (p. i8). This illustrates
again the universal struggle for power that causes so much pain
when not handled with insight. Darwin's father was actually a
very sincere, kindly, sympathetic man, as his large practise and the
affections of his patients showed, and it was not in injustice and
severity that he was dominating — ^that attitude usually justifies an
open revolt on the part of the son if the mother does not interfere —
but it was in his conscientiousness and sincerity of wishing that he
almost ruined his son. It is this type of affective bond that holds
the object in the severest grip when it naturally needs to break
away, like the lovely daughter who must sacrifice her love for chil-
dren to a dependent, defective old mother and finds to her horror
that she has spontaneous wishes for her mother to release her by
dying.
Darwin's method of working showed how keenly he humored his
inspirations and nursed his strength in his ascent as a man of intel-
lectual attainments. His study chair was higher than the average —
he had long legs — but upon the top of this he placed " foot-stools "
so as to considerably elevate himself and then neutralized the addi-
tional height by resting his feet on another chair, much to the mirth
of the family. The elevated seat of learning surely had a genetic
influence in his work through its reenforcement of the compensatory
striving which he had to assume in order to compensate for his
humility, and deference, and the " fatality " of reasoning, which had
become an attribute of his attitude of mind.
When his margin of endurance was too meager to work con-
sistently on other scientific problems he could still collect facts bear-
ing on the origin of species. "I could sometimes do this when
I could do nothing else," showing which wish in his personality was
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CHABLES DARWIN 1 87
the Strongest and could continue to work after the others had to
yield to fatigue. He says he never stopped collecting facts on the
origin of species.
Never for a moment after clearly conceiving his inspiration did
he abandon the creation of it. The excitement and difficulties he
experienced in controlling the aflFective reactions that were aroused,
as the secrets of nature were revealed to him, may be estimated by
the following comment: When twenty-nine, upon reading Malthus
on Population, in which the struggle for existence is emphasized, " It
at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable varia-
tions would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be
destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new
species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work ;
but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice that I determined not for
some time to write even the briefest sketch of it." Four years later,
he allowed himself to write, in pencil, a thirty-five-page abstract of
his theory. This was enlarged two years later into 230 pages, and
his completed theory was not published until some twenty-nine years
after the first general formulation of his idea of evolution.
Some other peculiarities about Darwin's methods of working
are important for the psychologist to recognize. He says : " When-
ever a published fact, a new observation or thought, came across me,
which was opposed to my general results (it was my practice) to
make a memorandum of it without fail at once ; for I had found by
experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape
from the memory than favourable ones" (p. .71). Also his keen
watch for exceptional phenomena; and " My love of natural science
(the medium for gratification of his childhood's wish) has been
steady and ardent." This pure love had, however, been much aided
by the ambition to be esteemed by fellow naturalists. (Reenforc-
ing post-adolescent wishes produced by the influence of Grant,
Henslow, Lyell, and others.) From my early youth, I have had the
strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed;"
(this originated in his mother's curiosity) "that is, to group all
facts under some general laws. These causes combined have given
me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over
any unexplained problem." (This mechanism of freely grouping
facts under general laws permits the aflFective cravings full spon-
taneity of function and they are not then subdued or depressed by
inhibiting fears of being unwise or mistaken. The capacity for
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1 88 EDWABD J. KBMPF
Spontaneous discriminations and comparisons becomes tremendously
greater than when shut in by don'ts.) " I have steadily endeavored
to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much
beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon
as facts are shown to be opposed to it." He says that every single
first-formed hypothesis except the one on coral reefs had to be
modified after a time or given up.
Darwin's magnificent courage to think persistently and honestly,
and the results of his method as a mechanism of personal improve-
ment, is a splendid example that many of our American scientists,
holding influential chairs in research and education, should consider.
The minds of American academic scientists seem to be subtly sub-
dued by the fear of making a mistake or of even considering an
hypothesis that possibly may have to be modified or abandoned.
This is particularly true for psychiatry and psychology.
Darwin's attitude toward the objects of his inquiry, especially
flowers, also reveals the affect that forced the inquiry, which was
love. He seems to have shown no narcissistic cravings to scintillate,
nor hatred, prompting him to acquire a triumph in order to have a
potent tool for conflict, nor a desire to be admired or to establish
priority. His love for flowers led him to treat them almost as
personalities. His son says : " I used to like to hear him admire the
beauty of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself,
and a personal love for its delicate form and colour. I seem to re-
member him gently touching a flower he delighted in; it was the
simple admiration that a child might have. He could not help
personifying natural things." His theory made him their coequal.
The actual experiences in his life in which flowers were so asso-
ciated as to arouse such tender affections, he practically tells us,
occurred in his early childhood when his lovely, gracious mother
revealed her curiosity about the secret of nature which might be
answered by looking " inside " of the flower.
Darwin, as a father and a creative thinker, was a most unusual
exception to the rule in that he proved to be a successful father;
whereas, most intensive thinkers make poor fathers. The career
deprives the child of much needed attention. The Encyclopedia
Britannica says four of his five sons became prominent in the scien-
tific world. The honor of this, however, probably is due Emma
Wedgwood, Mrs. Darwin, whose wonderful personality made it
possible for Darwin himself to become the creator of his work.
Darwin's attitude toward his children as an educating influence
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CHASLES DARWIN 189
was radically different from his father's controlling methods in that
he permitted his children to develop as freely as possible, thereby
permitting the affective forces to exercise their fullest powers. He
treated his children with "unbounded patience" and never "spoke
an angry word to them in his life," but it "never" entered their
heads to disobey him. This was not their fault but due to the fact
that he always " respected " their " liberty " and " personality."
Conclusions. — (i) The principle characteristics of Darwin that
made him one of the great constructive thinkers of all time are the
loyalty with which he cherished his mother's wish (fortunately it
was practical as well as ideal, which cannot be said of the wishes
of most mothers). He had to struggle with influences that would
divert him from his love-object at ten to seventeen in the classical
schools, at seventeen in the medical school, at twenty in a theo-
logical school, at twenty-two to make the voyage of the Beagle and
twenty-seven to thirty when he finally renounced all interest in the
last remaining restraints of orthodox Christianity, becoming, as he
considered himself, an "agnostic," and coequal of his objects of
study.
As a school boy and a student he became depressed and disin-
terested when he was forced by the stupidity of academic educates
to acquire in learning what his emotions had aversions for and yet
he literally glowed with enthusiasm when permitted to make his
own natural selection of friends and literature in biology and geol-
ogy. His own experience demonstrated that depression of adap-
tive capacities followed when an environment was persistently un-
favorable to the affective needs.
In this respect, the educator's crime of forcing children into
prescribed courses deserves the most remorseless criticism, because
it is still practised today in our public schools and imiversities.
(2) " He often said that no one could be a good observer unless
he was an active theorizer" (p. 126), which decidedly means that
since our spontaneous observations and ability to react to subliminal
stimuli, that is, delicate or slight variations in the environment, de-
pends upon the freedom with which the affective-autonomic crav-
ings may work, no one, who must work with material that he hates,
can become a good observer. This is the most common cause of
the tendency to dullness of thinking in most matured males and
females. Economic and moral obligations force the individual to
continue with the unpleasant work.
The second attribute that contributed to his success was the ab-
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190 EDWABD J. KEMPF
solute freedom of his thinking and theorizing about "everything"
(almost) and his humble willingness to abandon any theory, no
matter how much beloved it might be, when exceptions disproved it
When the dominant craving that the theory satisfied is not love but
hate, it seems to be much more difficult to admit error or to risk an
error because it implies an admission of inferiority.
(3) His inherent perseverence, and his humility and sincerity.
(4) His patience, which was probably due to the fact that Mrs.
Darwin was a perfect mother-image by birth and temperament.
(5)' The assimilation of suggestions from his grandfather's
theory and the influence of Grant, Henslow, Sedgwick, Lyle, and
Hooker, that counteracted his father's resistance to his becoming a
naturalist.
(6) The sacredness with which he regarded his objects of re-
search and the religious manner in which he consecrated himself to
the study of Nature and the welfare of humanity.
The influence that conditioned Charles Darwin's affective crav-
ings so that the only thing he could satisfactorily do in life was to
write theories of evolution and study the secrets of nature were (i)
the peculiarly influential nature of the personality of his mother,
due to her (a) love, (b) beauty, (r) sweetness, (d) fascination for
her father-in-law's work, and (e) her intuitive recognition that he
was not through with his task; (2) his grandfather's quest and
theory; (3) the personal influence of his post-adolescence hero,
Doctor Grant, to which was largely contributory the solution of Dar-
win's affective dilemma with his father, the confidential nature of
the talk, his " silent astonishment " whereby he did not lose the
tension of the affective reaction through talking it off; (4) the
accidental contact with Professor Henslow's ministerial and scien-
tific interests, in which personal combination the wish to please his
mother as well as the conflicting wish to please his fatiher, both
found a medium for gratification; (3) his uncle's insight into the
father-son conflict; (6) the voyage of the Beagle; (7) the father's
sensitive half-acknowledgment of pleasure in his son's change of in-
terest from sports to intellectual work ; (8) his father's forbearance
from further manifest conflict; (9) economic independence; and
(10) the unreserved devotion and heroicpatienceof his wife. When
we think of how she devoted her life to his comfort and shared
every one of the miserable nights with him during the last years,
the only song that Darwin was able to sing from memory has a dis-
tinct interest.
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CHASLES DARWIN I9I
Ar Hyd y Nos (Welsh).
(AU Through the Night.)
Ah I my love, how sad and drearyi
All through the night,
Is my heart, with sighing weary,
All through the night
Dearest love, couldst thou but hear me,
Surely thou wouldst, hasting, cheer me.
And remain forever near me, ,
All through the night
Sweetly sang beside a fountain,
Mona's maiden on a mountain.
When wilt thou from war returning,
In whose breast true love is burning.
Come and change to love my yearning.
By day and night?
The causes of Darwin's anxiety neurosis may be attributed to
his complete submission to his father, whereby he deprived himself
of all channels of self-assertion in his relations with his father or
anything that pertained to him, which, however, if indulged in, might
have led to a mortal father-son conflict, because both had irrepres-
ible affective cravings that contended for the idealization of the
same love-object. This would, perhaps, as it so often does, have
terminated in Darwin becoming a paranoic, if not an invalid. His
search for the secrets of nature and his mother's love would then
have become hopelessly aborted. Through the renunciation of all
envy and all competitive interests in life such as ambition for prior-
ity and the unreserved acceptance of his father's word and wisdom,
Darwin, by adroitly selecting diversions, succeeded in keeping re-
pressed all disconcerting affective reactions, with no more incon-
venience than that of producing nutritional disturbances, uncom-
fortable cardiac and vasomotor reactions, vertigo, tremor and in-
somnia.
The more one analyzes personalities, that is the origin of their
wishes and the manner of their wish-fulfillment-striving and the acci-
dents that exert a definite influence upon their successes and failures,
the more one realizes that many men and women are potentially,
finely creative, but few are fortunate enough to become associated
with factors that enable them to overcome or evade their resistances.
Darwin's forty years of serious anxiety neurosis, when associated
with the father's brother's "incipient" insanity and suicide, may
invite the impression of his being a constitutional inferior with
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192 EDWABD J. KBMPF
hereditary psychopathic traits that forced him to devote his entire
time to what was then r^^arded as useless theorizing in order that
he might grasp the splendid scheme of things entire.
I believe that Darwin's psychopathic traits were entirely due to
the persistence with which he repressed certain autonomic functions
or affective cravings.
The seriousness of his regret for having conflicted with his
father may be seen in the strange quotation which Francis Darwin
uses in concluding the biography of his father's life : " As for my-
self, I believe I have acted rightly in steadily following, and devot-
ing my life to Science. I feel no remorse from having committed
any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not
done more direct good to my fellow creatures" (p. 530). One
cannot help but think, in this connection, of the unhappy father who
wanted a son to practice medicine with him.
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TRANSLATION
A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD
By Dr. H. von Hug-Hellmuth
Translated from the German by
James J. Putnam, M.D.
HARVABD MEDICAL SCHOOL
AND
Mabel Stevens, B.S.
WELLESLEY
(Continued from page 92)
PART II
Introduction
Playtime (Die Spiekeit)
The play-period, the golden happy childhood days which poets
praise as such a beautiful gift granted to each person but once, goes
backward for its very b^nnings into infancy itself, but expands to
full sovereignty in the years before the child hears the sound of the
brazen-toned word, " duty," and becomes aware of its fetters for the
first time when he enters the school-room. Playtime weaves its
golden threads into the hours when school opens its doors, day
after day, and a stream of boisterous child-life escapes from restraint
to the sound of shouts of joy. But in the delightful period from
the first to the sixth year, the very small child is in the world for
nothing else and nothing better than to play from morning until
night. Indeed he makes everything subservient to play — ^the re-
quirements of the nursery, also those which family-life involves.
And he carries his childish play-wishes with him even into his
dreams, so that he may begin his next day's task in the same spirit
when morning comes. Thinking and feeling (Denk- und Gefiihls-
193
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194 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
tatigkeit), and every expression of his will, all acknowledge the
sceptre of play. Everything becomes a plaything to the child. All
the events of home-life find their place in the scheme of play, and
even the tragedy of sickness and death loses its terror to the child
at play.
In his beautiful book, "Die Spiele der Menschen," K. Groos
distinguishes between different forms of play, dividing them into
(i) play as means of discovery by experimentation, (2) play as a
mode of activity for the impulses (Triebe) of the Second Order.
In the making of experiments the sensory and motor apparatus are
both in action as well as the intellectual powers (faculties), the feel-
ings and the will. Among the kinds of play in which the impulses
of the Second Order come into active expression, Groos reckons
games of strife, of love, imitative games, and finally games of a
social character. We meet with all these variations of play (occur-
ring) as early as in the tendcrest years of infancy.
I. The Body and Its Functions in the Service of Play
When the infant is playing, he likes most of all to make exper-
iments upon his own body. During such auto-erotic activity (Betati-
gung) the body is subject and object (actor and spectator) at one
and the same time. No part of the body is so far out of reach but
that pleasurable sensations can be obtained irom it, and even to the
smallest child the aim (object) of play is pleasure. His surprise
and curiosity turn into keen joy when he finds, upon feeling his own
limbs, that he can make those same members obey his will and that
he has in them playthings which no one can wrest from him. Even
much later, and long after his body has been sharply differentiated
from the environment, the child continues to find in the sensations
derived from his body the source of great enjoyment. Then the
auto-sadistic tendencies which show themselves even in the first
year of life find rich satisfaction in the thousandfold little tortures
which each child loves to inflict upon himself, perhaps laughing all
the while. He does not account it as a cause of pain to wind a string
around one of his fingers until it is blue and cold. He beats himself
for fun; he pulls out his own hair and delights in doing so. My
nephew, in his fourth year, used to squeeze one foot into an iron
coal-rake (Schiirhaken) and run around the room in that fashion,
laughing and crying out (exclaiming): "Oh! Oh! I cannot bear
it I " Also the surprise which a boy not yet six years old prepared
for his mother can be interpreted hardly otherwise than as auto-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD I95
sadistic, when — ^by means of a string fastened to a door-latch — ^he
pulled out every other tooth in his upper and his lower jaw. Per-
haps there is not a cliild who would not find pleasure (and that, even
into the years of adolescence) in dazzling himself by alternately
staring long at a candle-flame and then closing his eyelids, or else
in causing sounds to mingle in a chaos by suddenly placing his hands
over his ears. Naturally, the ambition to hold out longer than his
comrades plays a great role in all this experimenting. And who is
there who would not, as child, purposely have tasted of sour, bitter
things whose taste was already known to be disagreeable? — ^who
would not have done it merely out of mischief (Mutwille), from a
desire to show-oS and to do a big thing? Under this head also
belongs the voluntary eating of May-bugs, worms, etc., on the part
of larger children, especially boys — of course only before admiring
spectators. Children who like to put themselves on exhibition in
this way are never without a strongly sadistic vein.
Since the little child has absolutely no feeling of disgust, and
the disgust shown somewhat later only takes the place of pleasure
in forbidden things — a pleasure which has not died out but has
merely been repressed through training — he continues to find interest
in the products of defecation and in the process itself just as he
had done in infancy. The original interest in these matters does
not become less, although as early as in the third year of life —
sometimes even in the second — ^the child learns, as a rule, to mask
that interest to a certain extent. The pleasure experienced with rela-
tion to everything connected with this process sometimes breaks
forth undisguised. But if the child is obliged to forego all such
expression of pleasure, he sometimes seeks a substitute gratification
in enuresis noctuma. A boy of nine years, who still indulges in this
habit, says that at four years of age when living with an aunt in the
country, he wet his bed every day " for his own pleasure " because
" lying in something warm " was so comforting, and he liked to feel
the linen sheet drying underneath his body, pressed against it. He
had played, moreover, that he was having fomentations applied as
his mother had had them shortly before when ill of typhoid fever
(Bauchtyphus) after a premature delivery. Evidently the heart of
his game lay in this phantasy : on the one hand, he identified himself
with his beloved mother; on the other hand, he had found pleasure
in thinking of (her) pregnancy and early delivery. For he said he
had always pressed himself against the sheet so "hard" that his
abdomen was quite flattened.
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196 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
The playing with one's own body and its functions takes on a
broader scope as soon as a child has a chance to meet with children
of his own age. Then the pleasure in exhibiting one's self and in
3rielding to the " peeping "-impulse (Esdiibitions- und Schaulust)
finds a wide field of action (activity) opened (presented) to it; and
while those desires are being satisfied, the first ties of friendship are
being formed. Thus, when my nephew was in his third year he is
said to have related with glee that a girl (nine years old) had shut
herself into the bath-room with him and had displayed herself
naked. At about the same time his mother heard him inviting a little
girl-friend to similar disrobing in the garden, promising — ^as return-
act — ^to show himself to her. Also I know the following fact in
regard to a five-year-old little girl, i. e., that while she and her little
brother three and a half years old, had their bath together, she
reached repeatedly after his "membrum"; and that the little boy
enjoyed making " Nature-studies " on his sister, too. Remembering
kindred pleasures of the previous summer, the children called these
performances " Seebadspielen " (ocean-bathing). The little boy,
"O,'* who had had enemas frequently ever since his third year,
amused himself by "treating" a little girl-playmate in that way;
while he declined the procedure, at her hands, terming it ** filthiness."
Here the repression was so far advanced that he would allow no one
but himself to play the active part, while his refusal of the passive
role (Passivitat) pointed likewise to unpleasant associations con-
nected with similar treatments to which he had been obliged to sub-
mit in nursery days.
The reason why playing " Doctor " is so common and so much
liked is that it is based on childhoods-experiences of this same sort,
and it is significant that children are apt to retire to an out-of-the-
way comer for this kind of play.
In the first three years of life the activity of special senses is of
immense importance for play, and the cause of this is that the sense-
functions are not yet fully under control at that period, and that the
gradual increase in efiiciency and accuracy in the use of the organs
concerned produces in the child a pleasurable sense of growing con-
fidence in himself and pride in his own strength and dexterity.
Naturally this is true in largest measure, in regard to exercise of
the muscles in walking, running, climbing, and jumping. The child
does not tire of making the same attempts, again and again, until
finally, with the aid of loud laughter and screams of delight, he suc-
ceeds in drawing the attention of his comrades to his performance.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 1 97
In doing such feats, he takes care to avoid expressions of pain
unless he really receives severe injuries, particularly if he finds that
an all too ready S)mipathy magnifies his courage and represents him
as a little stoic who considers repeated falling down simply as a nec-
essary evil and bears it as such. Climhing and going up and down
stairs give the child peculiar pleasure; perhaps, in part, because the
straining of the thigh and abdominal muscles excites erotic feelings.
The little boy, " O," at two and a half years, climbed on the brass
rods of a washstand up to the top of it ; and when his mother lifted
the child down, she noticed that he had an erection. We have no
such detailed records before us about any other child, concerning
pleasure in climbing, as we have about Shinn's niece, Ruth. The
writer does not suggest the sexual significance of this kind of mus-
cular activity, but its presence can be recognized from the abandon
with which the child carries on these exercises, from her persistence
in performing them, and from the strong pleasurable reaction which
they excite. For we are told :^ " All her thoughts are directed toward
climbing. Her heart and soul are set on it." The pleasure attendant
on climbing is partly due to the fact that it secures for the young
child a chance to satisfy his curiosity by examining birds' nests,
feathers, etc. As a rule, when children climb upon chairs, tables,
etc., they do so for the purpose of bringing within reach things
which adults have forbidden them to look at or to use; and, this
being so, one may assume that even the climbing done by older chil-
dren is not to be considered solely as an especially favored form of
muscular exertion, but that it should count, in part, as resistance to
compulsion and to prohibition in general. When little " O's " mother
wished to make the honey-pot safe by putting it upon a tall cupboard
supposed to be entirely out of reach of her little son, the latter de-
clared : " No use. Mamma ! I shall climb upon the low seat, from
there upon the bed, and then upon the high part of the bed; and
from there I can get to the honey very well," and, in truth, he was
caught in the act of doing this a few days later. Shinn reports of
her niece that she learned to like, in her third year, and still liked
when in her seventh year, to climb stairs and to slide down them.
We read : " She slides down, now on her feet, now with her body
extended at full length, and goes with a jerky motion." This kind
of movement suggests unconscious onanism. The same idea is in-
dulged in later, too, in a similar way by sliding down stair-rails,
1 Shinn, /. c, 537-539. 545, 554 ("Ihr ganzes Sinnen und Denken ist
auf das Klettern gerichtet"), 561, 575i 587.
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198 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
climbing trees and posts, etc., because thus the character of "the
shocking," "the objectionable," is taken away from onanism when
it has long since meant to the child " a forbidden act." From in-
fancy onward, the child loves rocking and swinging movements;
and as a rule this fondness remains and is strengthened, since a
chance for sexual excitement, without giving offence, is also pre-
sented here. Also the sexual excitement frequently finds itself in-
tensified through the pleasure attending (unconscious) exhibitionism
and the " looking habit " (Schaulust), both forms of indulgence being
easily gratified by such movements. As long as rocking (or being
rocked) is a passive form of pleasure, the participation in it of a
purely mental (emotional) component — ^the demand for love and
care — should not be overlooked. This also plays a role, to some
extent at least, in the infantile impulse to throw things about, a desire
which dies out as soon as it is found that no one seeks for the object
thrown. Beside the pleasure in the strong action of the muscles
which is thus called into play, the child derives no little enjoyment
from the agreeable feeling of keeping other people busy with him-
self. With larger children a sadistic impulse quite often comes to
expression in the act of throwing things. The more distinctly a
child becomes conscious of his muscle-power, the more intensively
he exercises the same. Only the delicate boy draws back instinc-
tively from the scuffles of his playfellows; and often very early tfiis
consciousness of bodily weakness gives rise to a feeling of bitterness
which finds vent in the compensatory exercise of cunning, or in self-
conceit (cultivating a belief in his own mental superiority). The
normally robust child, especially the boy, lets no opportunity of ex-
ercising his body go unused ; and the ancient game of " Who is the
stronger?" remains forever alluring to his muscle-erotism. The
games where wrestling and fighting come in bear the stamp of sex-
uality so plainly that it is hardly to be overlooked. Although the
educated layman has known, for a long while, what bad effects
tickling can have upon children, yet its importance is still too little
recognized. Fathers, uncles, grandfathers— that is, in general, indi-
viduals of the male sex — cannot refrain from tickling children and
thereby exciting them to that forced laughter which degenerates
into a compulsive scream-laughter often accompanied by compulsive
starts, the analogy of which to the orgasm of hypersensitive adults
during the sexual act cannot be denied. Perhaps the peculiarity
which many women have of bursting into tears at the height of
pleasure has been established through experiences of the tickling
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD I99
sort in youth. Shinn records :* " As a general thing the tickling of
our child was forbidden. Nevertheless, her grandfather tickled her
several times in her second year ; and this induced in her an extra-
ordinary amount of pleasureable excitement. She threw herself
over backward on her grandmother's lap and pointed to her own
breast and neck, begging him to tickle her again. When he com-
plied, she shouted and laughed for joy, emitting a tone which did not
sound like a reflex movement but like a natural expression of pleas-
ure." This remark in regard to little Ruth's reaction to tickling
seems to me worthy of notice for this reason, because in her case
the movement — ^atavistic in the woman— of throwing herself back-
ward upon being excited sexually was especially conspicuous. When
boys are tickled, one observes rather a Uirowing-about of the limbs,
a doubling of tiie body, and a springing up with a jerk — ^in other
words, an increased activity which stands out in contrast to the girl's
passivity, both forms of reaction serving to foreshadow the behavior
of man and woman respectively in the emotional relationships of
their adult life.
With many children the strong development of skin-erotism is
manifested in certain <bad habits, such as continual scratching of the
head, or of the palm of the hand until local inflammation is induced ;
or again in moving the clothes from side to side on the body — ^a habit
which, in fact, is frequently only a disguised form of onanism.
Freud surmises that some time before the third year of life — ^and
as a result of still unexplained instincts of that period- — ^the infantile
form of onanism dies down, and that then a latency period comes on
which soon gives way in its turn to a flood tide of sexual feeling
which falls between the third and fourth years. At that time sex-
interests occupy the centre of the infant's feelings and acts, as the
result of which he takes up masturbation again. Much has been
written about the physical and the mental harm which come from
this infantile self-gratification. But it is easy to go too far in such
generalizations. One naturally tries to correct a too early activity
of the sex(ual) impulses as much as one can, but this is a task which
calls for the greatest possible caution. For we know from the
analysis of neurotic invalids that the so-called "castration-com-
plex " — ^that is, a group of feelings and emotion which arise in the
infant and become firmly fixed as a result of the threat (outspoken
or implied) to cut oflf the "membrum," or the (substitute) finger,
on account of onanism — ^has such a lasting effect that with many
* Shinn, /. c, 235.
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20O JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
persons it cannot be eUminated, thereafter, from the mental life, and
is likely, instead, to become the source of psychic impotence and of
other nervous anxiety-states (Angstzustande).* If we could only
teach ourselves to recognize the phenomena of the sexual life not as
a forbidden something which should be kept secret from the child,
we should be able to tread these paths in more reasonable fashion.
Gentle admonition which defines those manipulations as " not nice,"
but not as harmful, helps the child more than terrifying threats.
The motive of love for its mother induces many a child to desist
from this form of gratification. My nephew, at the age of four
years, after he had been warned repeatedly in regard to this practice,
said touchingly, to his mother, one evening: ** Mother dear, all day
long I have not taken my little tip in my hand, except of course when
I have made Wischi (urinated), but then you were with me." Thus
when the impulse is not too strong and the onanistic act has not
become a habit, love and the stimulus to ambition are able to accom-
plish more than severity, the purpose of which is not understood
and which, for that reason, is doomed to failure. In the diary-like
records relating to the development of individual children, unfor-
tunately not even the slightest suggestion is to be found on this im-
portant point; and those writers who occupy themselves with this
question record nothing but isolated data regarding it, or make re-
marks not connected with the rest of the chronicle of the child's
development. This separating of the sexual components from the
whole picture of a childhood history is to blame, in large part too,
for the fact that infantile masturbation is so persistently overlooked,
or else denied. One sees only the shadow side of the life under ob-
servation, without recognizing that these children, as well as others,
have lovable traits of character also; and, furthermore, that these
children form the majority of young people. Indeed, we look at the
dark side without considering that strongly marked sexual manifes-
tations are simply the necessary reverse side of an early developed
intellect. When one hears a child called " precocious," one may be
sure that before long erotic and sexual characteristics of one or
another sort will become manifest. For it is a law of nature that in
proportion as the interest of the child becomes awakened, it will be
instinctively directed, from inclination, toward that emotional realm
that has so much to offer him in the way of pleasurable excitement
'This complex speaks out, too, in the fear of many children of having
their hair cut (Author.)
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 20I
II. The Development of the Understanding (Die
Verstandesentwicklung)
An early development of the understanding is conditioned upon
mentaly taking in and digesting the various experiences of daily
life; indeed, the existence (evidence) of such development implies
that the child has done that very thing. Those about him often
believe that the occurrences in question have remained unnoticed by
the child; or else people think that "he does not understand." It
is certainly true of children, even though not true of adults, that the
development of the rational powers proceeds, not at the expense of
the emotional life, but almost always " hand in hand ** with it. This
is much more strikingly true in the case of "only" children than
with children who have the opportunity of maturing in the midst
of a group of brothers and sisters, and are therefore not removed
from contact with the sphere of thought most characteristic of child-
hood, so often or for so long a period of time as is the "only"
child. The highly pleasing "sayings" of children, the spontaneous
utterances which give an inkling of the freedom and originality of
the childish mind, reflect the closeness of the connection that obtains
between the growing child and his environment. Curiosity and at-
tention are the most effective of all the forces which call the rational
thought-processes into being. In our characterization of the period
of infancy, we have already illustrated how the child reacts to every-
thing which seems to him worth investigaticm ; and what was there
said holdis good, even more definitely, for the years that follow.
Now the question arises: "With what actual experiences do the
first ideas, judgments, conclusions tend to deal?" Without exag-
geration we can say: With the processes of nourishment and of
digestion. The latter process, in particular, just because so much
stress is laid on it in his home training, becomes of such engrossing
interest to the child as to occupy the central place in his unconscious
thoughts and in his games, and this would be so even if there were
no constitutional, inherent tendencies at work in favor of this out-
come. So strongly does anal- and urethral erotism become rooted
among the instinctive cravings of the infant, that it is not to be cast
out in later years except at the cost of genuine renunciation. In
both the earlier and the later periods, the holding back of the bowel-
movement constitutes a pleasure-accented act; and frequently the
immediate need of little children to urinate is to be recognized
through noting the cramp-like attitudes that they assume as they go
about on tip-toe, and is also to be read from the tense facial expres-
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202 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
sion which reveals a combination of pleasurable excitement and
anxious curiosity— all meaning " How much longer can I hold out? "
My nephew, when he was from four to five years of age, did a
similar thing. Before paying attention to his need he would hop
about on one leg as if possessed, and he met every appeal with the
invariable reply: "I must not! I must not!" When these bodily
needs, even though urgent, are apparently forgotten during play,
the " forgetting " arises from motives of a quite similar sort — ^as
does enuresis nocturna also. The child wishes to enjoy the agree-
able feeling of tension in the urethral or in the anal zone as long as
he possibly can ; and, indeed, with boys the urethral irritation is well
known to cause actual erections. The great importance which the
child attaches to the excretory act— doing so partly in imitation of
his elders — comes to expression in the demand to have his mother
present* (die Mutter moge dabei sein) ; and the same tendency is
shown in the oft-observed habit which children have of disturbing
the meal-hours by calling attention to their personal needs. Chil-
dren do this even in their fourth year — ^indeed, even as late as in
their sixth year and the deeper meaning of the act, i. e., to claim
mother's care exclusively, during meal times as well, is usually over-
looked by adults. The father wishes to see this desire treated as
a piece of naughtiness; the mother excuses it as a habit linked to
the hour. Indeed, with children whose appetite is deficient, a virtue
is sometimes made of necessity, in the hope that after the " evacu-
ation " has taken place the meal will prove to be more of a success.
Anal and urethral erotism not only offer the child ample oppor-
tunity for playful activity, based on their immediate gratification,
but turn his games into definite paths with special outcomes. Uri-
nating through cracks of garden fences, to the greatest possible
height on a tree, or in such a way that the stream will rise into the
air in serpentine lines, or, again, intentionally letting it run over the
edge of the "night-vessel" and listening to the sound it makes —
all these are never failing modes of diversion among young boys.
As soon as the first strong repression has taken place, then the child's
great liking for water, mud, and sand comes to light. To make a
mud-pie not too watery and not too hard, just like a " Driicki " — ^as
my nephew expressed himself — ^always remains a favorite form of
play to the child, all the more so since this gives him a good chance
to soil hands, face, and clothes ; in that fact lies the chief charm of
^ Or perhaps the unwillingness to have her present (Trans.)
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 203
the play. Little Scupin* used to defend himself against his mother's
reproaches relative to this, and against her plea that his cousin,
Lotte, looks clean even while at play, with the reply: "Then she
isn't playing right. When one plays right, one makes oneself dirty
too." The listening — accompanied by smiles and laughter — to the
running off of water, f oi" example of the bath water ;* the playful
collecting of saliva and squirtit^ it; all indicates, with the three-
year-old child, a shifting of interest from the " forbidden " to the
"harmless" zone even thus early. But beside this, as is natural,
reversions to the original form of excitement often occur. In his
fifth year, my nephew and a company of smaller and of larger lads,
were caught in filling, with a liquid of their own providing, a hol-
low in the ground dug out for that purpose. With red cheeks and
with eyes beaming with delight, little Max came running up to his
mother, and said : " Look, Mutti ! We must fill our pond up full ;
it is half full now." And, another time, when he was between three
and four years old, and was playing by himself with his railroad-
train, suddenly he took several pieces of paper and put them in the
last coach with the remark: "There! That is for the conductor
when he has to make ' Driicki.' " This is a variation of the thought
of all children : " What do the engineer and the conductor do when
they need to relieve themselves?" — a question which, upon the
child's first visit to the theater, is extended to include actors* — and
a question which, in its repression, forms perhaps one of the reasons
for the urgent " call of Nature " at the wrong time.' Certainly the
anxiety of many adults, when making a journey, to find a place in a
coupe as near as possible to the toilet-room, is likewise to be traced
to the same source as is the irresistible compulsive laughter (Lach-
zwang) of many people when an entire company listens intently to
an unexpected noise.
Not only do the functions of digestion serve the child for the
purposes of play, but his budding understanding knows how to put
them to use, a little later, in the service of his feeling and emotion.
In Diary III, No. 4953, under the date of Dec. 24, 1851 (published
^ Scupin, /. c, II, p. 215.
» Shinn, /. c, 22s ; Stem, /. c, 325.
*0. Ernst, Asmus Sempers Jugendland, XI. Kap. When five-year-old
Asmus is taken to the theater for the first time by his brothers, he inquires—
among many other things — whether one can "go out" while there, if one
"has to go"?
^ A very common symptom among nervous patients, as also among cler-
gymen going to the pulpit, and soldiers going into battle. (Trans.)
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204 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
by R. M. Werner, II edition), Hebbel records, in regard to his
daughter Titi, at that time three years old : " If the maid-servants
will not conduct themselves as she wishes, she threatens to wet her-
self." The child, in short, punishes a lack of affectionate attention
(Liebe) to him and his desires, with whatever means he has at his
command and in the way which seems to him likely to be as un-
pleasant as possible to those whom he wishes to rebuke.
The open manifestations of anal and urethral erotism become re-
pressed and checked, as time goes on, in proportion as the effect of
training makes itself felt; and in its place there appears gradually
the sense of " modesty." This repression of desires which in them-
selves are pleasurable often brings it about that a feeling of disgust
arises which is not directed solely against the processes immediately
in question and against the products of the bowel-evacuation, but is
very frequently transferred to the very taking in of nourishment,
and expresses itself especially in the refusal to partake of certain
dishes which from their color remind one of the "defecation-
products." One day, at noon, when roast hare was served, in brown
gravy, my nephew, then about four years old, called out: "What
have you got there? I'm not going to eat that. That looks like
Driicki." And upon eating chocolate he said: "Pfuil Now my
fingers look full of Driicki ! " (evidently having in mind the copro-
philic practices of his first year). Such mental associaticms as this
undoubtedly take place with most children, though they are not
allowed to clothe them in words. In close association with the pro-
gressive repression of this interest in the defecation-process, it fre-
quently happens, even in infancy, that ceremonial observances of
one or another sort are brought into play, as invariable accom-
paniments of the excretory act — ceremonials which retain their im-
portance even into the period of puberty. In closest connection with
anal and urethral erotism stands the pleasure which children have in
exhibiting themselves and in "peeping" (die Exhibitions- und
Schaulust der Kinder) which propensities, of course, also indicate
the infantile trains of thought. The former inclination (exhibi-
tionism) seems to be inborn, a native instinct, since it is already in
evidence at a period when the eye is of but little importance as an
erogenous zone, the power of perception being still but slight. One
has, therefore, the right to assume that pleasure in exhibitionism
("exposure") comes originally from the agreeable skin sensations
accompanying changes of temperature. It is, however, by no means
without a sexual accent — 2l fact which becomes evident when one
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 205
takes note of the parts of the body chosen for exposure. It is the
genitals that are thus selected during the first three or four years;
and it is not until educational factors have come in, that the child
seeks to conform, in this respect, to the demands of custom. Next
in order of preference to the organs of generation come the nates,
which the child finds it pleasant to have exposed, both when he is
awake and when he is asleep. Children continue also, to make use,
in fun or in anger, of certain gestures which are to be thought of as
repressed exhibitionism. With his fine gift (power) of observation,
Bogumil Goltz* recognized this tendency, and devotes the following
passage to its description : " When the diminutive piece of manhood
clad in child's frock, wishes to make himself especially annoying to
the grown-ups, he often threatens to make himself naked, and he
likes best to voice his threat in the words, 'Ich heb' mich gleich
Bauchchen ' ; and to this may be added another barbarism, ' I shall
dash myself on the ground, this minute.' But one does not let one's
self be bullied; and so, straightway, the little rebel rolls on the floor
'in puris naturalibus' — a sort of sansculottism in child's clothes.
At the worst, this amount of rebellion leads to a little tickling with
a switch, and costs only those charming childhood tears which the
spectator does not know whether to take as laughing or crying ; for,
indeed, the small creator of them does not really know himself."
One might look upon the sudden changes of rage into laughter, oc-
curring under such circumstances as these, as examples of psychic
discharge taking place just in consequence of the unhindered carry-
ing out of exhibitionistic desires. This way of looking at the matter
finds itself endorsed by the habit which obtains among sensible
parents, of simply letting the child rage himself out. The pleasure
in exposing one's own body is an expression of " narcissism." Orig-
inally it is practiced by children of both sexes to the same degree;
but with the boy narcissism soon enters paths along which it moves
veiled in many a disguise. And it is just here that the profound dif-
ference which exists between the sexes makes itself apparent. • In
his second and third years, however, the little boy pays himself the
tribute of as honest admiration as the little girl does herself. Thus
when for lack of other covering, a little woolen jacket belonging to
his aunt was put around my nephew, then in his fifteenth month, he
looked at himself in the mirror with a satisfied smile and could not
have enough of stroking himself and exclaiming " Ei ! Ei ! " in praise
of his appearance. Although he was still unable to understand
« B. Goltz, Buch der Kindheit, p. 250.
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206 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
speech, yet his aunt's good-natured raillery, " Look! He is quite in
love with himself/' must have made an impression on him; for the
next day when his mother returned after a day's absence, he could
not be induced to put on the little jacket again. Unfortunately,
especially with girls, narcissism finds abundant food in the fashion-
follies which vain mothers cannot deny themselves the pleasure of
following; and they do that without stopping to consider of how
much naturalness, of how great freedom of movement, they deprive
their children. This form of display does not succeed with the boy
as a rule ; he would far rather run around day after day, in the same
little torn or patched smock-frock than to suffer a curtailment of his
freedom of activity. The inherited aggressiveness, which is stronger
with the 'boy, leads him to indulge his exhibitionistic desires more
publicly than the girl does hers. In addition, training (pedagogy,
die Erziehungskunst) contributes much to impress the feeling of
modesty upon the girl earlier and more strongly than upon the boy.
In spite of that, however, the excretory acts retain their power, even
with girls, to furnish a desired excuse for "seeing" and "being
seen." Love for animals proceeds in part from the great delight
with which the child watches these processes in them. The chance
to make close observations is indeed much more easily managed
under such conditions than it is with playmates or in the case of
adults — although it is precisely with them that the child misses no
opportunity of "peeping," in the hope of seeing something that
might give the explanation of many an obscure problem. In the
same way, in order to gratify their ears, at least, if not their eyes,
children like to lurk round toilet-room doors. Indeed, many chil-
dren make a direct demand to be taken in there with the mother, and
it is especially true of boys; the attraction of the opposite sex is con-
spicuous in this. As a general thing this desire comes from memory-
traces of times when the mother, thinking the child asleep, or else
that he is noticing nothing, has put less reserve than usual upon her-
self in satisfying her needs. Or, again, the child's request arises
from remembering journeys during which the mother was afraid
to let her two- or three-years old child wait at the door of the toilet-
room in frequented railroad-stations. I leave out altogether those
isolated cases in which the unf reed residues of her own anal-erotism
are the unconscious motives of the mother's fear. When the first
thoughts and words are formed (Gedanken- und Wortbildung) it is
natural for them to be connected with an emotional sphere so erotic-
ally marked. Anal-erotism is of supreme importance in the forma-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 20^
tion of character — as Freud has shown in his work; and I will not
end my remarks on the subject of anal-erotism without at least indi-
cating in what relation it stands to the question which is of greatest
importance to the child, the question " How do children come into
existence?" If I reserve the detailed consideration of this until
later, yet I should like to mention here that in the course of the
child's search for a satisfactory solution of this enigma, there always
comes a period in his development when he takes the excretory act
as giving the longed-for explanation of the mystery — Whence the
" Lumpftheorie " of Hanschen,^ and little Anna's opinion of the
matter.* Each child is satisfied with this self-found theory so long
as he thinks of the mother as sole creator of (the) children. It
seems entirely natural to him that a foreign body should be cast out
of the mother's body by way of defecation, or else of vomiting (i. e,,
either through the intestinal tract or else through the esophagus).
Pleasure in exhibitionism and in ''peeping," leads the infantile
mind to occupy itself deeply with the engrossing problem of naked-
ness. The child's interest in it is expressed in countless questions.
As long as he is not prevented from speaking frankly about the
matters, whatever they may be, with which his reasoning-power is
engaged, he never grows weary of talking about those parts of the
body which are the source of his most pleasurable feelings and
making them the central point of conversation. The fondness for
dolls which is so characteristic, in the earliest years, of boys and
girls alike, springs from the demand (desire) to see the human body,
or at least an image of it, entirely without clothing. And because
little bath-dolls meet this wish the nearest, they enjoy a special popu-
larity with all children. This lively interest soon causes the child to
seek means of distinguishing between the sexes, and this is partic-
ularly the case with children who grow up among brothers and
sisters. The boy thinks of the genitals of the girl as something un-
finished, something incomplete, something to which time must be
counted on to give the proper growth. The root of the pride of the
male in his sex lies in this conception. The boy, as a rule, considers
the girl as his inferior, because she lacks that member from which
he derives so much pleasure. Soon comes the time when his affec-
tion goes out with special strength to the mother; and similarly he
acts as guardian to the little girls even when they are above him in
^Analyse d. Phobic eines funfjahrigen Knaben. Jahrbuch f. psycho-an.
u. psycho-pathol. Forschung., I.
*Jung, Konflikte d. kindlichen Seele. Jahrb. f. psycho-an. u. psycho-
pathoL Forschung., II.
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208 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
years and in size. Thus, my nephew, when four or five years old,
would summon ten-year-old girls to join him in play, by calling out
to them: "Here little girl! Will you play with me?" — and upon
being instructed that the child was already a big girl, much older
than himself, he would add naively: "Well, yes, older; but for all
that she is only a girl." Little Scupin, too, in his fourth year, found
his sex an advantage.* The diary tells us that " Bubi is very proud
every time his father takes him by the hand and goes out for a walk
with him upon the * Steinmauer ' or along the * Waldweg.' And be-
cause on one occasion his father spoke of himself and Bubi as ' we
men,' Bubi's pride and feeling of superiority now know no bounds.
He puts on a serious and exceedingly dignified bearing, tries to keep
exact step with his father, and is very much concerned that no
feminine individual should join them. ' But mamma must not fol-
low us, nor grandma either ! ' " Premature awakening of the sense
of modesty marks those cases where boys wish to do without the
"member," under the pretext of its being inconvenient and super-
fluous. It speaks for itself that in the latter assertion there lies an
unuttered question as to the true purpose (use) of the "member."
Sometimes the wish to look like a girl, i. e., to be like the mother in
all respects, is at the foundation of this eagerness to be thus altered.
As one might expect, interest in the genitals begins earlier with
the boy than with the girl. If the latter has no brothers and no boy
playmates, it even happens in some instances that until puberty
arrives she remains in uncertainty as to the difference between the
sexes (liber den Geschlechtscharakter). Her mind is not clear on
this matter because observations accidentally made on the street
lead to confusion in her thoughts ; and the same is true of pictures.
Figures wearing the loin-cloth (especially in pictures of the saints),
the fig-leaf on pieces of sculpture, etc., contribute, it is true, to keep
the imagination busy, but do not help at all to a calm and clear con-
ception (Auffassung). This concealment of the naked truth awakens
in the intelligent child the impulse to investigate the interior (in-
side) of things. He becomes soon carried away by the wish to
obtain an explanation for the processes going on within his own
body, and above all else to have revealed to him the secrets of the
process of digestion. This wish shows itself undisguised in ques-
tions such as children from three to six years of age like to ask,
for example : " Has everybody a Popo (buttocks) ? " " Father and
mother, too?" "What would happen if I had no Popo?" "Must
• Scupin, /. c, II, p. 28.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 209
a person die whose Popo is grown together?" etc. Why it is that
both sorts of excretions from the body do not have exit through a
common orifice, in the same way that solid and liquid nourishment
are taken into the body through one and the same alimentary tube ;
what the intestines look like "inside," and similar thoughts — ^these
are the primitive questions which soon experience a shifting in form
to more "harmless" topics, when the diild has been reprimanded
and made to realize that his contsant occupation with such interests
is objectionable. "Why do I have hair, nails, skin?" "Why does
one wash oneself every day ? " " Why have I only one nose but two
eyes? " " What if a man had four feet ! " " How would it be then? "
"Why do not people have tails?" etc. The innocent question:
"Why is the blood red?" always covers a desire to introduce reg-
ularly the favorite but repressed theme which is often finally brought
to a point in the form of inquiries -with regard to the color of the
bowel-movements (Exkrete).*^ The inclination, quite common
among older children and adults, to reject certain shades of yellow
and brown as " disgusting," goes back to the preference for them in
earliest childhood.
The first perception of his own erections is of the utmost sig-
nificance to the boy. Unless, indeed, they remain unnoticed in the
very first years of life, it is hardly possible that the feeling of tension
connected with the erections should escape the notice of the intelli-
gent child; he cannot remain unaware of it. But unfortunately,
nothing is said by any author with regard to this point. My nephew,
it appears, first became conscious of an erection some time in the
course of his sixth year. At least, it was during that period that he
first asked the following question: "Mutti, why is my Zipferl (little
tip = membrum) sometimes very small and thin, and then so large
and stiff, standing up so straight that there is no room for it in my
trousers?" Ans. — ^"You know it is that way with the mouth. It
is almost always small, but when one laughs or yawns it gets wider
and longer without our knowing exactly how." "Yes, and when
eating, too; and my Zipferl does the same when I have to make
Wischi (urine) ; that is why my Zipferl is so thick in the morning
when I wake up."
From observing one's own body it is only a step to compare it
with the bodies of other persons. Looking over and " sizing up "
representatives of his own sex introduce the child to the ideas (zu
^<^This is the more exciting problem because strongly and habitually ex-
cluded from ordinary conversation and related to various other forbidden
topics. (Trans.)
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210 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
d. Begriffen) of " large " and " small " ; while observations made on
the other sex lead to knowledge of differences between the sexes.
Shortly before his sixth birthday, in a conversation about "yotu^
and old," '' large and small/' of his own accord my nephew put the
following questions: '' How large is the Zipferl of a big man?"
Ans. — ** I don't know." *' So large (indicating 30 cm.) ? " Ans. —
" No." " Or so long (showing the length of his middle finger) ? "
*' Why does it grow so large with a man? — ^and how is there room
for it then in his trousers ? " Ans. — " All parts of the body grow —
the nose, the arms, the legs — and so that member must become
large." "Of course. It would be funny (ridiculous) — such a tiny
Zipferl for such a big man ! And then it has to be so large because
a man makes so much Wischi (urine)." After some minutes' play
with his building-blocks, he continued: "Yes, yes — so long (point-
ing to the longest building-block). I have seen it on men in the
street, on coachmen. But once, on one of them, it was all red, all
bloody; and I was afraid." This last remark makes one infer that
the child may have entertained fear of mutilation of his own " mem-
brum," although the house-maids and the bonne had been expressly
charged not to use such threats.*^
For children of three or four years old, or less, the difference
between the sexes is solely an affair of clothing. How much nearer
his father the little boy feels who has outgrown the sexless kilt and
has received his first pair of trousers. And what an unbearable
picture of disgrace is called up when the threat is made that he will
have to put on the little dress again if he does not show himself
worthy of trousers ! Here, too, a logical explanation by my nephew
may well find place, when, thinking of the dissimilarity between man
and woman as something entirely appropriate, he said : " Mutti, I
know you have hair here (pointing to her lap) ; all women have it,
because they have no Zipferl. And the men (I know that from
seeing Herm Direktor K — when I went bathing in the Danube)
have long black hair on the chest, of course because they have no
such ' Hiigel ' there as women have." In this fashion the sex-prob-
lem, with its attendant mysteries, occupies the child's mind unceas-
ingly; and with a little less exhibition of prudery on the part of
adults, who are over-quick to take offence at such frank, artless ex-
pressions of childish speculation, a chance would be afforded for
still deeper disclosures (revelations) about matters which are of
vast importance for education (Erziehung). These observations
^^ A threat not uncommon among thoughtless and ignorant persons.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 211
which the child makes are not without their poetic side. Thus, a
little boy of five years, after watching his little two-year-old sister
in the bath, called her protruding navel "a rose-bud" (Knospe von
einer Rose), while he said his own navel looked like " a little fritter."
Little Scupin calls his prosaically, "little belly^bobbin " (Bauch-
knoppel). The female breasts are of greatest interest to the child;
and this is partly due to the memory of their role as first source of
pleasure. Such interest appears especially in children who have
been nursed beyond the normal time. Even toward the end of his
second year a certain little boy begged his mother every day at noon
for "a bit of bosom" (um ein Stiicki Bu) ; and the same boy was
in the habit, even in his seventh year, of openly making known his
dislike of over-slender women, through the disparaging criticism:
" Pf ui ! that woman has no Bu (bosom) ! " It seems to the child,
and particularly to the girl, that the chief difference in the sexes
lies in the development of the breasts ; and the many means which
growing girls use to beautify their persons have their deepest root
in unfulfilled child-wishes. Similar aids to beauty are often made
use of with dolls, as their little girl owners soon discover. And this
makes clear the naive remark of a small five-year-old, whose female
relatives were all of them very thin, but who (the child) had had
the' chance to observe a family friend with large breasts: "When
I am grown up, I shall stick as much cotton (padding) inside my
dress as Fraulein L — does in hers."
From such expressions as the above, the sexuaP* character of
the child's longing "to be big" speaks out clearly. The following
passage in regard to that longing is to be found in Bog. Goltz:
" What all children, equally and without distinction, cannot wait for
with patience is to be ' grown up ' (Grossgewachsensein). The per-
sistent question of all places and times is the one known to us all
through personal experience: 'When shall I be big? — ^very big? — as
big as father and mother? When shall I be a father? When can
I marry? When can I go out alone, eat alone, put on trousers, go
to school, not go to school any more, and do ever3rthing I like? ' "*•
In these prospectings into the future, the thoughts of "marrying"
and of becoming a "father" (or a "mother") come into the fore-
ground again and again. In true child fashion, the future " milieu "
is to be exactly like that of the present. E. and G. Scupin report as
^2 In the opinion of the translators, the desire for power is of quite equal
importance witii the other desire, here defined.
^> Bogumil Goltz, Bach der Kindheit, p. 249.
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212 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
follows with reference to the fourth year of their boy's life :^* " He
has now entered that phase in which the story constantly runs thus :
* When I am big and tall, then — will — ht/ To-day, for example,
we heard him talking to himself in this way : ' But when I am very
big and tall, then I shall be as big as the sun. Yes, yes, and when I
am as big as the sun, then my head must bend, or the ceiling will hit
me.' " In the morning — so we are told — he was fond of getting into
bed beside his mother "so that his feet were against the foot-
board," and then imagining himself taller than his mother whose
feet did not touch it. The longing to be taller than mother is com-
mon to all boys and expresses the unconscious wish for sexual mas-
tery (Oberlegenheit). The correctness of the sexual interpretation
is shown clearly in the note (p. 74) with regard to the tenth month
of the fourth year: " Shall I be a papa when I am grown up? Can
I drink coffee when I have become a papa? What will Lotte say
when I am a big father (Lotte is his cousin about six months
older) ? ' Ans. — * Lotte will then be a " big " mamma.' ' But what
do papas and mammas do all the time, I wonder? ' " Once, a month
later, impatiently and imperatively he " desired " to be a papa. Upon
being assured that he would certainly be one some day, he asked
naively, " But does that come so slowly ( Aber wachst das so lam-
sam) ? " Perhaps the naivete lies only in the pronunciation of the
words and not in the flow (direction) of his thoughts.
It is true in the life of every child that sleeping in a large bed
signifies a mighty approach to the desired goal of being "grown
up." At the beginning of his fifth year, little " O " shed bitter tears
because he was expected to be satisfied with a child's small bed
during a stay in the country. He rebelled against this humiliation
even while he was dreaming. "No, no! there is no place for me
(lit, I have no place)." Scupin's diary (p. 85) also relates: "It
was a great event in Bubi's life when he had a large bed such as
adults use, and slept there instead of in his hitherto occupied crib.
At night, of his own accord, he asked to be taken to bed (a request
hardly ever made before that), and in the morning he was unwilling
to get up, because he wished to enjoy the big bed longer. In a con-
temptuous tone he called his small bed, 'the baby bed,' and he
assured us that he would not ' be a baby ' any more now in his big
bed, and that he would hold fast to the comer of the bed-spread."
This longing to be "grown up," to be "big" (gross zu sein),
that lies at the heart of all children's games, shows itself most
^^ Scupin, Bubi yom vierten bis sechsten Lebensjahre, pp. 36, 74, 83, 94.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 213
clearly in the directly imitative plays, such as reading the news-
paper, writing letters, smoking, wearing glasses, etc.
Little girls, when they make use, in their games, of their newly
acquired knowledge concerning the structure and the functions of
the human body, are apt to do so secretly, when by themselves. The
little boy, on the contrary, can hardly wait for the chance to com-
municate his new-found information to s<xne grown man. The boy
is not content with what his mates tell him; the instruction they
give him does not satisfy him ; he prefers to cross-question adults in
order to gain still further knowledge. There is need here of great
wisdom on the teacher's part. For the child should neither be denied
the opportunity of interesting himself in matters which to him seem
harmless, nor led to brood over problems which are made over-
exciting through remarks and questions of a lustful nature — a
danger which becomes greater the more the child is left with serv-
ants. To the person who knows how to take the right way in dis-
cussing such subjects, the difficult question of "sexual enlighten-
ment " loses the greater portion of its terror. In fact, the difficulty
drops away and vanishes — at least, in regard to those points with
reference to which the child has not previously been misled. The
child's understanding becomes broadened through an intelligent ex-
planation, fact by fact, and the decision, contemplated with such
dread, "How and when shall I tell my child what he ought to
know ? " loses all its paini ulness.
III. Memory (Die Erinnerung)
One of the most important functions of the human mind
(Geistes) is memory. It implies the ability to form associations
and presupposes a certain mobility of the mental elements ; and by
virtue of this — ^as spontaneous (freisteigend) and voluntary recol-
lection — it provides the indisx>ensable prerequisite for learning any-
thing. The fore-sitage of the process of remembering, namely, the
act of recognition, is not a pure association-process. Even in the
case of very young children it acquires, almost at once, an emotional
character which is manifested under the form of surprise, or de-
sire, or repulsion. During the period of life that precedes speech,
this "feeling-tone" — connected as it is with "choice" or "will-
reaction" (Willensreaktion)— expresses itself in gestures; but with
advancing development not only does the child employ speech, the
most expressive means, to show pleasure or displeasure upon recog-
nizing a person or thing, but he reproduces, in unconscious thought,
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214 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the situations in which these objects once had an affective signif-
icance for him. In brief, only those experiences can be remembered
to which a strong " feeling-tone " of pleasure or of displeasure was
originally attached, even though — ^as the result of definite but un-
conscious motives — this note of pleasure may have been (may be-
come) entirely repressed later. There come into existence in that
way those memory-fragments (Stiick-Erinnerungen) which seem
incomprehensible even to the individual concerned, because their
most important component is absent fr<Mn consciousness; he is un-
aware of the objectionable element for the sake of which they have
been retained in memory.
It is often taken for granted that the earliest memories of the
adult do not reach back farther than his fourth year; that in some
way they are related to speech-development. But when one con-
siders that, as a rule, children two or three years old remember
clearly events occurring in their second, yes, even in their first year,
then one must admit that some further explanation must be sought
for the fact that the memory of adults fails them for the period of
life before the third or fourth year. This explanation is to be found
in intentional repression — ^as is shown from the psycho-analysis of
neurotics and from the study of dreams. The apparently senseless
stuff with which dreams deceive us, and the mental material which
the psycho-analyst wrings from the patient with infinite pains — all
this is rooted, in the form of subconscious memory-traces, in the
experiences of earliest infancy. From the therapeutic and the ped-
agogical standpoint, as well as from the psychological standpoint, it
would be no " unprofitable experiment " — ^as Preyer calls it* — ^to seek
to carry over, well into the more advanced years of childhood, the
memory-contents of the second and third years. Those memory-
pictures would lead to the explanation of many so-called childhood
faults, and to the understanding of many peculiarities noticed in
adults.
The memories which reach back the farthest are especially apt
to tell of experiences which have sexual or erotic contents; and in
consequence of the persistent, arbitrary and artificial (kiinstlich)
repression of his strong instinct-life (Triebleben), such memories
are soon recognized by the child as objectionable subjects of con-
versation and are banished to the subconscious region of the mind.
In his work entitled " The Mental Development of the Child," Com-
payre assumes that it is in the gfreater or less precocity of the child
1 Preyer, Die Seelc dcs Kindes, p. 233.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 2X5
that the reason is to be sought for the differences which obtain as
to the point of time to which the first memories go back. But since
the term " precocity " is nothing else than a euphemistic term for a
lively sex-interest, this opinion places us at once on the fertile soil
of the Freudian teaching. Not only is it likely that the child's close
attention will be directed to whatever excites his sex-interest, but
the matters so observed are sure to be revived upon occasions which
seem to the adult to have no logical connection therewith, and to
furnish no reason for such revival. There is no element of the " ac-
cidental " either in the operations of memory or in any other psychic
occurrence; but it often happens that the connecting threads of
thought are positively concealed from us, or else that we do not
choose to see them.
The fidelity of memory for the reproduction of what has been
experienced depends upon the strength of the emotional emphasis
(Gefiihlsbetontheit) by which the experience is marked. The
source from which this emphasis is derived may be some circum-
stance that might seem of secondary significance, and it is in obe-
dience to this principle that those instances are seen where past and
present events are linked together in our thoughts, in ways that ap-
pear absurd or mysterious to us so long as we do not recognize " the
subconscious," or do not give it the place which belongs to it in the
mental life. This is illustrated by the case of a lady of thirty-nine,
who, just before a gynecological examination, which was under-
taken for the purpose of a curetting, suddenly remembered an ex-
pression of severe displeasure which she had drawn upon herself
from her father in her sixth or seventh year, because in spite of her
being repeatedly forbidden to do so, she had opened the buds of a
fuchsia-stalk before their unfolding. To the person who does not
know about the sexual significance of flowers in the life of the child,
stfch seemingly unmotivated memories apparently arise without
reason.
The memories connected with erotic experiences are frequently
the ones which are the most pleasurable and the most tenacious,
even with the adult ; and when age or illness prevents actual sexual
indulgence, such memories often take the place of it — and yet, in
spite of this, there is a strong disinclination* to admit that the child's
ability to remember is something that depends upon his sexual and
erotic feelings. W. and C. Stem* furnish us with the following
*W. u. C Stern, Erinnerung, Aussage, und Luge in der ersten Kind-
heit, p. 62.
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2l6 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
" memory " which their little son, Giinter, gave at the age of three
years and two months (August, 1905): "Once, in Swinemiindc,
when his mother was ill in bed, and the family was eating dinner
in her bed-room, he said: *You were sick once, in the old house;
and we ate dinner in your bed-room, too.' Mother: 'Do you know
where you sat?' Giinter: 'That's all I know/" To this Stem
merely makes the remark that the event lay three quarters of a year
behind them — Whence that the "latency-period" (the interval until
the " memory " came) amounted to nine months. But he does not
mention that when the family dined the first time in the sick mother's
bed-room, a little sister had been bom not long before (Dec. 29,
1904), and that therefore the memory was linked with a highly ex-
citing (affektvoll) circumstance. The same author* gives still an-
other illustration which has reference to the fourth month of
Gunter's third year: "After a month had passed since a certam in-
cident took place, the picture of a double-looped snake set free the
memory — ^*Bille (Brille, spectacles) — Ella.'" Stem throws the
following light on those words : " In Schreiberhau the boy's mother
had made spectacles out of pasteboard, and had put them on the
children for the game of 'Doctor.' And once a little playmate,
named Ella, brought as her contribution to the game, a similar pair
of spectacles with her. The double loop of the snake served to re-
mind the boy of the spectacles ; and they, in their turn, recalled his
playing with Ella." When Giinter was two years and six months
old, at sight of a small picture for children, this Ella appeared (came
to mind) again. The pronounced sexual note of the favorite game
of " Doctor," together with the erotic tinge (Erotik) of early friend-
ships between children, explain adequately the entrance of the
memory-picture into consciousness. The influence of unconscious
sexual thought-associations showed itself very plainly, also, in the
memory-life (Gedachtnisleben) of Stem's oldest child, little Hilda.*
The sight of an uncle who was present on one occasion while she
was having a tub-bath reminded her of when " Onkel F — bathed
with a suit on." It was pointed out in the earlier part of this book,
what an important role the problan of nakedness (insufficient cloth-
ing) plays in relation to the child's mental life (Geist) ; and now we
find that view strengthened by a new set of facts. Here are, for
example, two boys, respectively seven and eight years old, who
remember vividly a sojoum in the country, of scMne four years ago;
« W. u. C. Stern, /. c, p. 56.
* W. u. C. Stem, /. c„ p. 57.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 217
and they lay special emphasis upon the fact that they slept in one
bed, and tell how they played wkh each other under the 1)ed-<:lothes,
before going to sleep at night. With boys, as is well known, rail-
way-journeys are frequently the cause of the first sensually toned
feelings. For days afterward, the journeys form a fruitful subject
of conversation for the children, and that not merely because of the
numerous new impressions made on their minds by the brisk traffic,
etc. As a matter of fact, the first railroad-journey is remembered
by many children all their lives, and in particular, the fear expe-
rienced at every shrill whistle of the locomotive — ^fear which not
seldom implies feelings of a sexual nature. The five-year-old boy,
" O," admitted to his mother that the reason why he liked to ride on
a train of cars so very much was because he always needed so greatly
to relieve his bodily needs at such times, yet could not go to the
toilet-room — " and that was such fun."
Spontaneous flashes of fanciful thought — ^the well-spring of wit
— are of common occurrence in childhood, indeed are rather char-
acteristic of that period; and all the delightful sayings which one
cannot designate better than by calling them "child-talk" (Kinder-
mund), owe their very existence to the easily stimulated (excited)
power of memory. And as the best jokes, the most witty remarks,
understood by everybody and finding free acceptance everywhere,
have flourished upon sexual soil, so the most pleasing sayings of
children are rarely without the unconscious expression of the desire
for knowledge pertaining to sexual ntkatters. In those sayings the
experiences of earlier times are mirrored — those personal expe-
riences which are intermingled with the general events of the day,
affected by them, and altered also through the influence of training.
Pedagogy erects its educational structure upon the ability of the
human mind (Seele) to remember. That is the foundation and the
necessary presupposition for the mental and emotional development
of the individual, as well as for the civilization (Kultur) of races.
But for the aid of memory every attempt to influence the infantile
mind (Seele) would be ineffective, and one could never succeed in
teaching the child to take his proper place in the world, to submit
to social custom — to the so-called " conventions." When using pun-
ishment for the child's good, we appeal to his power of memory ;
and we do the same with reference to each word of admonition, each
word of affection, and every expression of good-will. Tiedemann*
reports as follows with reference to his son then near the end of
^Tiedemann, /. c, p. 34.
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2l8 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
his second year : " On the twentieth of July he came upon a place in
the house where he had been punished, about four weeks before,
because he had made a mess there. Without other provocative
cause than the sight of the familiar spot, instantly he said (not dis-
tinctly in entire words, but plainly enough to let this be recognized
as his thought) that whoever " dirted " the room would get a good
beating. Thus we see, that thoughts proceeding from that time of
woe had remained with him. As we have learned, masochism and
muscle-erotism take away from every punishment much of its pain-
ful character; and evidently they did not miss their effect in this
case, in spite of the tender youth of Ae boy in question. The mind
of the child receives impressions easily, all pleasure-accented ones
in particular, and holds them hard and fast For that reason, the
" forgetting " of a command forbidding s(Hnething or of an order to
do something, is seldom a true forgetting but is one desired by (it
represents a real desire of) " the subconscious." The unconsciously
motivated forgetting is a form of forgetting which, as soon as it
becomes a source of pleasure (lit. = as soon as the gain in pleasure
is drawn from it), turns into a remembering. The child, like the
adult, often forgets where he intends to forget,* only the motives
for this process remain more thoroughly concealed from him than
they do under like conditions from the grown person. It is signif-
icant that mothers are so often oWiged to remind their children of
the necessity of responding to their bodily needs ; while this is rarely
the case when the children are at meals, and then mostly if the food
is little liked.^ Conversely, the memory is very active* if only it is
sufficiently well estalblished upon an erotic basis (sexuell-erotisch
fundiert). During a stay in the country, in his fourth year, my
nephew let no day go by without passing his urine through a hole in
a certain garden-fence, sooner or later, while he was out for a walk.
And even now, after three years have passed, the memory of that
board fence calls out a meaning smile.
Memory-images are of greatest importance in the learning of
letters and numbers during play. The majority of children from
educated families know the alphabet and the numbers, wholly or in
part, long before the beginning of the school-period. Most children
teach themselves the letters from those found on business-signs,
placards, hand-'bills, etc. Surely it is of some consequence what kind
* He forgets what he does not want to remember. Trans.
^Thus with children, their own memories prove sufficient guides when
supplemented by the influence of a hearty meal. Trans.
* It needs no additional influence. Trans.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 219
of advertising media these are. My nephew had the liveliest in-
terest in representations of scenes of jealousy and of murder, in the
bill-iposters of a moving-picture show, and likewise in the pictures
of fights (especially of naked wrestlers) ; but he liked pictures de-
signed for diildren, too (preferring scenes of punishment). He
studied out for himself the letters and numbers on placards — also on
the sign-boards of the electric street-cars. For instance, at three
and a half years of age, he called the cars marked with a figure 8,
"Pretzel-cars," "S-cars," "Snake-cars."
According to Preyer and others, memory controlled by will,
namely, the act of recollecting (recalling) (das Sich-Besinnen), ap-
pears in the third year — ^but according to Stem, not until later.
These acts are of supreme importance as having a direct bearing on
education. For as soon as the child is able to subject his memories
more and more to his will, and hence by turning voluntary attention
to something in the past to have the power to summon it at pleasure
from the store-'house of memory — then the time has arrived when
instruction and admonition will begin to have lasting influence. But
at this stage of his life, the child also becomes acquainted with cer-
tain illusions of memory (Erinnerungstauschungen), although, for
reasons to be discussed later, he is apt to hold fast to them in spdte
of recognizing their true nature. Frequently it happens that (the
process of) recollection appears first in relation to lo<^alities (places)
where the child has had experiences of some sort which were of
emotional importance. My nephew who was once to blame for his
mother's missing a train because of his playing too long with a little
dog, remembers the drcimistances perfectly to this day — after three
and a half years. Memories connected with time are more slowly
established than those relating to place. To the child "once" is
sometimes yesterday, sometimes a year ago, or longer yet. Children
often get confused, also, in their attempts to make a selective use
of the words "to-day" and "yesterday"; not because of a faulty
word^memory, such as sometimes causes them to substitute "yes-
terday " for " to-morrow," or the reverse, but because of a memory-
illusion in regard to time.
IV. Imagination (Die Phantasie).
Perhaps the power of mind which enables us to beautify the
homeliest things, and to transform every-day occurrences into some-
thing wonderful, flutters its wings (so to speak) before the reason
is able to put the fanciful creations into words. One is often amazed
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220 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
over the thought-associations which the child forms at a time when
he is barely able to express himself in speech. The power of asso-
ciation and the power of memory are the substructure and the foun-
dation-piles of the airy castles of the imagination. These are men-
tal constructions which, however broad and high, are always based
upon real experiences. Illusion and combination, supplementing
each other, utilize as their materials the mental-images which past,
present, and future supply, and melt or fuse them together, as it
were; and the scope of this work of the imagination is infinitely
wide. At no stage of life is the human being able to yield himself
so unreservedly to the magic sway of the imagination as in the play-
period. Sully designates the third to the fourth year of life as the
highest point in the development of the imagination. On the one
hand, at that period, everything is still new enough to the child to
command his undivided attention, and he follows his instinct for
investigation ; on the other hand, his intelligence has been awakened
to such an extent, through the environmental influences to which he
has been exposed, as to be able to apperceive, and make some prac-
tical use of the impressions received. If one subscribes to the view
that the work of the chiM's imagination is dependent on (determined
by) the receptive power of his mind, one finds oneself in harmcmy
with Herbart, who maintains that the imagination (Eintnldungs-
kraft) shows its strongest development in the seventh year of life.
I think that such generalizations with regard to the working of the
infantile mind are not of much value, for the reason that they do
not take individual differences sufficiently into account. It should
be borne in mind that the imagination is likewise peculiarly de-
pendent, for the details of its development, upon the milieu. A child
living in the country develops very differently from a child whose
home is in the city. The power, the terror, and the 'beauty of the
phenomena of nature — which the city-child has perhaps had no op-
portunity to observe — make a lasting impression on the soul of the
country-child. The child growing up in the quiet of a village, in-
vests the city — ^in his fancy — with enchantments that for the city-
child have long since lost their magic charm. Also, more than one
child, coming from the bustling crowd of a great city, and entering
a forest for tfie first time, finds the aphorism prove itself literally
true, " He cannot see the forest, for the trees." Here fairy-tales —
with their dark, pathless forests — ^have given rise to an idea far
removed from reality, and imagination has promptly seized the
thoughts and embellished them. Imagination peoples the forest
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 221
with fabulous beings and monsters, with thieves and murderers, and
thus prepares a fertile soil for fear. Are there not thousands of
adults who are afraid of being surprised in a forest by darkness
drawing on? In this they hold firmly to the old, long- forgotten
childhood fear, even though they are unwilling to admit the truth of
such a connection in thought.
There is not a single thing so insignificant but that imagination
could lend it size and importance. For the child, imagination puts
life into every piece of wood — to the boy a stick is a man-destroying
soldier, to the little giri a stick becomes " a real live baby." All the
poetry of the child's soul is rooted in imagination. Naturally, a
sexually erotic (sexuell-erotische) note, too, makes itself conspicu-
ous here. The little girl who rocks her doll or places it at her breast
to nurse it, believes in the reality of her act. (It « what she thinks
it to be.) She feels herself "a truly, truly mother," and she carries
out all the measures for the care of dolly's body, with the same busy
interest and the same tenderness as she sees her own mother do with
a flesh and blood baby. The little girl does not forget to put into
effect on her doll-child the scolding and the punishments which she
herself has had to suffer upon occasion. Here, anal-erotism and
sadism find a rich field for activity, in a positive sense as well as in
the form of over-compensation. In the little mother's imitative
house-keeping, the continual scouring and polishing, the over-indus-
trious setting the house in order and arranging everything to suit
her taste — .these acts do not spring solely from a desire, on her part,
for activity, but they must be recognized as a beginning of the re-
pression of forbidden desires, of those longings which live them-
selves out, in their primitive form, in the game of "Doctor," and
apear in phantasies under many different forms. During an autumn
stay in the country at the home of a friend of his mother, my nephew,
at that time three and a half years old, helped to dig up the cabbage-
turnips. Suddenly he cried out: "Mammi!" (He called the lady
by that name to distinguish her from his "Mutti.") "Mammi!
Those that have dirty faces (=show bad spots) I shall place with
the Popo (dem Strunk, the stalk end) up." Little Tiedemann,* at
two years of age, gave a similar personal designation to the stalks
of the white cabbage (Kraut). Scupin's* little boy loved dearly to
peel boiled potatoes; for to him they were "little naked things"
(kleine Nackedei), and for that reason they were objects of affec-
* Tiedemann, /. c, p. 37.
' Scupin, /. c, p. 8a
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222 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
donate regard; his imagination evidently converted the potato-skin
into a dress — as of a child — and endowed the potato with human
form, thus securing, virtually, a chance to indulge in a nakedness
phantasy. Imagination rules the life of the child so powerfully that
he gladly contributes something of his own personality to the cre-
ations of his fancy, and he takes it very ill when people around him
do not recognize this fact. Stem* writes of his son, Giinter : " In
the case of our boy we noticed signs of the powerful influence of
the imagination (Illusionsleben) at a very early age. There was a
period (from two years and nine nx>nths to three years and six
months, shortly after the birth of his little sister) in which, for hours
at a time, during the day, he assumed the role of another person,
and also assigned fanciful parts to other people. He cails himself
merely *big sister' (hosse (grossc) Schwester), but to his real big
sister, Hilde, he gives various other mints — ^'little Hester' (Schwes-
ter), 'Mize,' or *Gettud.' His mother is 'Hossmutter' (Gross-
mutter, grandmother). On many days he is 'Muttsen' (mother),
and in that role he takes care of his ' little ' sister. The peculiar
thing is that he carries out these ideas in situations of real life, too
— ^at dinner, when dressing, etc. — and he is beside himself with rage
if anybody wishes to correct his statements 'by giving the right
names. He calls himself *big sister' (hosse Hester) before
strangers also. This fanciful self-deception plays a part even in his
most highly emotional states. Although moved to tears, or in great
excitement, he persists in holding to his phantasies, and this is true
even for the hours of the night. One evening, not long ago, I heard
him crying piteously in his bed, and in answer to my question, he
complained disconsolately, that his little ball, and also the big one,
had been lost on the Avenue. He begged that his 'grandmother*
might go out in the morning with *ing sister* (himself) to find the
balls ; but he said that ' little Mize * must not go witfi them. How
great his grief was over the loss of the balls is clear from this, that
even the comforting assurance that a new 'ball shoidd be bought for
him was of no avail. ' No, don't buy a ball. Find the big ball and
the Uttle ball,' he sobbed ; and yet with all his sorrow and wailing,
he clung to the roles as he had assigned them."
Sully mentions two sisters who proposed to play " being sisters " ;
and the "father and mother" game is just as ancient as that of
" mother and child.'* Now the question comes : Why does the child
literally live himself into the role of one or another member of the
> Stern, Erinnening, Attssage, tt. Luge, p. 104.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 22$
family with such intensity that he not only refuses to give up this
phantasy himself, but also demands of other people that they shall
respect it, as if real? I shall point out, later: in the first place, what
an immense influence parents and brothers and sisters exert in the
love^life of the child; in the next place, how an addition to the
family seld<xn gives him a feeling of pleasure, since the little new-
comer robs him of a part of the parental love ; and finally, how each
child tends to (become envious of that parent who is of the same sex
with himself, and* how — by the aid of the creative power of im-
agination — ^he endeavors to secure for himself in fancy, and by way
of compensation, certain results for which he longs but which, in
reality, he must forego. When little Ernst Wolfgang Scupin,* in
his fourth year, said of his own accord : '* But I shall put my papa in
a soup-kettle and pour hot water over his face, all the time, with
the ladle until he is nice and tender, and then I'll eat him up " the
child gave expression to a phantasy of a sort that is not to be traced
back solely to the fairy-tale of " Hansel and Gretel " with the witch,
but that voices the unconscious purpose of conveniently ridding
oneself of '' papa," the most dangerous rival near " mamma " ; and
the fairy-tale simply provides a cloak which serves to clothe the
evil wish in harmless form. Little Giinter S — , shortly after the
birth of his little sister, began to play the parts of certain other mem-
bers of the family in a way that was quite significant, now assuming
the role of " big sister," now that of " mother." In short, since he
had been thrust out of his place as youngest and most important
member of the family, he took on (in fancy) the character of
"mother" (who cares for everybody, and hence is very much
needed), or he sought, at least, to have himself regarded as "the
older sister."
In his play, where the power of phantasy makes itself so strongly
felt, the child begins to show his interest in the difference between
the sexes, and it is characteristic of him when he asstmies a new
role that it is usually that of a person of the same sex with himself.
Boys, in particular, directly refuse to take either a woman's part or
that of a little girl. This tendency should be regarded as indicating
what a serious matter play is to the young child, and also what
youthful ambition is striving to accomplish. He wishes to repre-
sent himself as occupying positions of no less importance than those
held by persons who have some real or imagined advantage over
others. For that reason, in plajring war, the boy wishes to be a
* Scttpin, /. c, p. 8i.
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224 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
" General/' and will consent only unwillingly to be a common sol-
dier, but if he must be the latter, he makes himself conspicuous, at
any rate, through special courage or else through qualities which
would bring him the reputation of badness;' he prefers, for instance,
to be a robber rather than a gendarme on pay. And, so too, the
little girl would rather be "the lady of the house" than "the cook,"
and rather "the mother" than "the child." But whenever a sub-
ordinate part is taken, an ambitious child always learns to compen-
sate himself therefor by indulging in imaginary excesses of one or
another sort. In all such games the child wishes the semblance of
reality to be preserved, and he insists on the constant recc^^nition of
this by his environment — ^to be sure, only while the game lasts.
When from four to six years of age, my nephew loved to play with
his aunt a game which he called " teamster " ; in playing this game,
however, he took the part of " express-agent," " stationnmaster," or
"building-contractor," while she, as the veritaible "teamster," had
to pretend to be a regular block-head, so as to give him ample oppor-
tunity for grumbling and scolding. It went very much against the
child's will when the " teamster,'* having been treated all too rudely,
suddenly declared he wouldn't stand that, he was going to the police
to enter a complaint. " No, no ! Aunt H — ,*' replied the little rogue,
"You mustn't dare do that. That's no way to play!" Little
Scupin,* too, used to take it very ill if his mother did not enter into
his plan and accept his play-inventions the instant he chose to make
himself, for example, "a letter-carrier" or "a merchant.'* At the
centre of all these games a deeply embedded " cause " lies like a sort
of core. For in thus playing, the child is abJe to live-out his hostile
impulses toward his parents, brothers, and sisters without being
obliged to fear punishment, as he can stop his play at any moment.
Only in play does he refuse obedience ; only in play does he speak
against his brothers and sisters, beating and insulting them while
dolls bear their names ; and only in play does he gain the chance to
exercise a tyranny which the traditions of the nursery would not
tolerate. Indeed, if one or the other of his parents has recently
drawn upon himself (or herself) a feeling of disapproval on the
part of the little critic, he understands how to voice this criticism
in plain terms in the " papa and mamma " game. But the child also
has a chance, in imagination, to do good deeds, for the performing
of which both the will and the power fail him in actual life.
" Shakespeare's Richard III, Act I, Sc i.
Scupin, /. c», p. 151.
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MENTAL UFE OF THE CHILD 225
A special place in the child's phantasy-life belongs to the fes-
tivals which are celebrated r^ularly in the f amily, and above all to
Christmas with its measureless mystery and charm. For a long
while the intelligent child, rich in imagination (phantasiereich),
holds finnly to his belief in the Christ-Child, the Weihnachtsmann,
St. Nicholas, and Krampus — even if at times he also boasts of his
superiority to this fairy-tale lore. The supernatural, the wonderful,
is such an essential element of the child's reveries that he leaves this
sphere of thought only against his will, for tmconsciously he feels
that with the ceasing of the beautiful child-faith much of the poetry
of life goes too. Goltz^ writes : " Upon the whole, I always enjoyed
miracles better than I did the rational explanations of them — ^those
explanations which, examined closely, in broad daylight, so to speak
— ^led me further than ever into the thick wood ; and I have seldom
wished to annoy a person with inquiries concerning what I have felt,
in my very soul, to be something miraculous." To the child the
brightly lighted Christmas-tree is a live thing, a living being
(Wesen) from another, mysterious world — ^and this would be so to
him, even if he had seen ever so many Christmas-trees in the market
the day before. When a child myself, I never could help being sur-
prised that " very ordinary " people sold them. A certain little girl
of six years begs earnestly that the Christmas-tree be not burned
after the holidays, " because that hurts the Christ-Child." And for
the same reason a boy of five years old refused to eat the little angel-
shaped cakes from the Christmas-tree. " No, no ! " he cried. " If I
do, I shall have to bite the Christ-Child's wings off." As a result
of this tendency of the childish phantasy to endow with life every-
thing belonging to the Christmas festival, an impression is made of
which traces remain even in advanced years. Poetic natures retain
for themselves an unadmitted remnant of the old belief in the won-
der-workings of the Weihnachtsmann, and show this in the warnings
they are so fond of giving to the children not to touch the manger
and the angel (Krippe und Engel), and not to regard the decorated
tree — or the ornaments from it — as mere toys.
The work of the imagination is shown at its best in the child's
power of living over the pleasures of the holiday season before they
come to pass. All his life no adult ever forgets the secret doings in
his parents' home at Christmas ; the listening at the door, the ex-
citement of the waiting for mother to return from making pur-
chases. These are fore-pleasures for which the child has a great
^Goltz, /. c, p. 162.
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226 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
fondness. My nephew, in spite of having declared positively, upon
a certain occasion as early as in his fourth year, that he knew there
was no Christ-Child, that the presents came from father, mother,
and aunts, nevertheless did not fail, even as late as when six years
old, to ask daily, at Christmas time, whether we had seen the Christ-
Child and what he had said. Indeed, Max, of his own accord, pre-
pared a notebook for the Christ-Child to read in which " Mutti "
was obliged to enter her son's "good deeds" (Bravhciten) on the
left-hand side, and his "bad deeds" (Schlimmheiten) on the right-
hand side ; and for every good deed done she had to strike out a bad
deed. And if it happened that he did not want to go to sleep at
night, then the question: "Is Maxi asleep?" spoken in the disguised
voice of his great-aunt, always had a good effect. Invariably came
the reply: "Yes, Christ-Child, I am going to sleep now. Good
night, Christ-Child." Whereupon the latter had to say, in a soft
voice: " Good night, Maxi." In the same way, from his third to his
seventh year, his interest in the Christ-Child's "work-shop" re-
mained constantly active; and rain and snow came to have, for little
Max, anal and urethral associations of an erotic sort related to
fancied operations there. It seemed to him a self-understood thing,
that grown people should telephone to this mystic spot ; and without
our knowing the association for it in his thought, the numlber " VIII,
568" was invented as telephone-number for the place from which
presents generally came. The telephone subdivisions were: (i) the
Christ-Child, (2) St. Nicholas, (3) the Easter rabbit, (4) the
Birthday-Man, and (5) the Nameday-Man. This is an up-to-date
improvement on the time-worn custom among children of writing
letters to the Christ-Child. The " list of wishes " also plays a great
part in the Ufe of my nephew. Perhaps this childish habit, especially
when it is carried to excess, is to be regarded as the forerunner of
the passion for making out catalogues, inventories, etc. — ^a practice
which many adults affect under a sort of compulsion.
As the thoughts of children revolve about Christmas with special
delight, so Easter in its turn forms a similar centre of interest for
the imagination. In his subconscious self what child doubts the
reality of the Easter raibbit? Scupin's Bubi^ makes drawings and
clay-models of it, and hopes to meet it on his daily walks. He
thinks of the rabbit as dispenser of small gifts, even after Easter
has passed ; and he attributes the fact that a hole was darned in his
stocking during the night to the friendly intervention of the little
* Scupin, /. c, pp. 153, 210.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 227
creature. The reason for this very lively interest in the Easter
rabbit, on the child's part, is that through the associations connected
therewith the problem as to the origin of living beings presses for
an answer. With tears falling from his eyes, my nephew refused
to eat the little Marzipan chickens and rabbits, because, he said (re-
gardless of scientific considerations), "They are the children of the
Easter rabbit."
The refusal of children to eat sweets shaped like animals or like
human beings — ^a notion which occasionally passes over into its
opposite — is so common that a deeper motive than that usually
ascribed to it must be thought of as really operative ; such refusals
show that the child's mind, in bestowing the attributes of a person
upon inanimate things, passes in feeling through the entire scale of
love and hate. Kindly feelings, and cruel ones as well, are actively
engaged in the production of phantasies ; but the child often aban-
dons his extravagant fancies for sound common sense when he is
warned, for example, that whipping might hurt the little horse or
the doll. " It does not feel anytfiing; it is only wood " is the regular
reply of sober reason, which, it is true, is likely to be suppressed
again in the next moment by the imagination. A similar acknowl-
edgment of the claims of reason appears in little Scupin's refusal
when playing with his tin soldiers to allow those who had been shot
down to have a victory, in their turn, over the enemy. " If the ' red
ones ' have already shot the ' blue ones ' dead, then the * blue ones '
cannot get up and shoot the ' red ones.' " The infantile (kindlich)
phantasy takes its own paths, and no path is too steep for it; im-
agination finds a way out in every emergency, but will not let itself
be forced by another person's intelligence (von fremdem Geist).
(To be continued)
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ABSTRACTS
Jahrbuch fiir Psychoanaljrtische und Psychopathologische
Forschungen
Abstracted by Leonabd Blumgaxt, M.D.
of new york
(Continued from page 120)
The third case he discusses is the little girl, who is noticed to be
most precocious when very young. Sadger says that she flirted with
him at the age of one and a half years. At one and three quarter years,
as an evidence of her very strong attraction for her father, it was noted
that when she received a photograph of him at the time he went on a
long trip, the child was inseparable from it. She took it to bed with
her, to the table, on her walks, etc, and showed it to everybody. From
birth this child had urinated much and often. As a natural result of
her father's experience, she was very strictly treated and often punished,
all without avail. She urinated involuntarily every time she was
frightened or punished. It was noticed that when her intense desires
were not fulfilled, she wet herself in her rage. Her father noted that
at the age of one year and ten months she stood in front of him and wet
herself, and at the same time had the vacant look of a masturbating
child — ^this in spite of the realization that she would be severely pun-
ished. It would seem as if the pleasure derived from this act was
greater than the pain which came as a necessary consequence. The
relation between the child's wetting herself and her father's trips away
from home is interesting. A few days after her father's departure she
stopped wetting herself. But on his return her bad habits reasserted
themselves; in fact, if she knew in advance that he was returning, she
anticipated it by wetting her bed the night before his homecoming.
This child showed, also, very strong negativistic tendencies. At the age
of three, it had not been possible to train her to sit on the pot — ^this in
spite of the fact that, in default of obedience, she suffered corporal
punishment. If she was forcibly placed on it, she refused to evacuate
her bowels or empty her bladder, despite the fact of her enforced posi-
tion on her nursery chair, with this end in view, for long periods of
time. Immediately after being dressed or put to bed she soiled herself.
Her compulsion-neurotic father kept a diary of this child, and by far
the largest portion of this journal is taken up with the struggle of the
228
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ABSTRACTS 229
parents to teach the child to acquire "room and bed cleanliness," In
spite of the most severe chastisement, this child refused to pass dejecta
or flush the bladder, except at her own convenience and pleasure, and
though coerced into sitting for long periods on her chair, remained
obdurate.
The second child of this couple, at the time this paper was written —
the last citation — ^was not yet a year old. At three and a half months
the mother noticed that every time she washed the genitals, the child
had an erection; the slightest manipulation in this region caused the
child to laugh heartily and to show every evidence of great pleasure.
In its twelfth month his mother was forced to acknowledge that he
masturbated. He refused to urinate alone and asked his mother to hold
his penis for him. This bad habit was only overcome by repeated
corporal punishment. Attempts have thus far been unsuccessful to teach
him to empty bowels and bladder regularly into the pot. An additional
interesting observation made by both parents is the marked preference
he shows for the mother and the perfectly frank aversion manifested
towards his father.
4. Analysis of Egmonfs Dream, — In reading Goethe's "Egmont,"
Robitsek is impressed with the dream which Egmont has in the last act,
and his first conscious movement toward his head, to feel for the laurel
wreath of which he has dreamed. Stimulated by the work Freud had
done in analyzing the dreams of Jensen's "Gradiva," he thereupon at-
tempts an analysis of this dream in " Egmont."
Robitsek dissolves the dream into its elements ; shows its relationship
to the thoughts of the waking period; interprets its symbolism; and
reveals the latent content behind the manifest one. He discusses the
effect of the dream in resolving Egmont's fears of his coming execu-
tion into fantasies of freedom and triumph.
Robitsek points out that the dream is composed of the elements
which are present in real dreams: first, memories of childhood; second,
unfulfilled wishes; third, the material in the conscious. Egmont's
memories of childhood explain the contradictory character of the
dream. As a result of his unfulfilled wishes, he beholds as fulfilled in
his dream "the two dearest joys of his heart," the freedom of his
people and the possession of his beloved. And the fact that the con-
sciousness of actuality is still present is shown by the fact that Egmont's
first motion upon awaking is to feel for his head, as though to make
sure he still possessed it. For, though he is conscious only of the pic-
ture of the goddess presenting him with a crown, nevertheless the
thoughts of his execution have been but imperfectly repressed.
Finally, Robitsek asks how it is that a dream written by Goethe can
so closely follow the lines, the structure, and the content shown by real
dreams. He states that it is probably due to the identification of the
author with his own hero. " Egmont " is, in fact, a piece of that " Great
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230 ABSTRACTS
Confession" which Goethe himself admitted was contained within all
his works. Egmont is probably a portrait of Goethe in a certain period
of his own life.
Robitsek closes with the words of Wagner's Hans Sachs :
" Just this the poet's work I deem :
To analyze his every dream.
For all the truths from men concealed
Are in their nightly dreams revealed.
And that which we call poetry
But clarifies and sets them free."
5. A Dream that Explains Itself. —
" In truth the subtle web of thought
Is like the weaver's fabric wrought:
One treadle moves a thousand lines.
Swift dart the shuttles to and fro,
Unseen the threads together flow.
One stroke a thousand threads combines."
(Faust)
I. The Technique of the Analysis of Dreams
At the request of a young lady — ^not a neurotic — Rank undertook to
analyze her dream. He deems it worthy of publication, because it
reveals its own meaning. In order to make this fact clear, he refers to
a point made by Freud concerning the technique of the analysis of
dreams.
Freud distinguishes between the remembered '^ manifest dream con-
tent" and the "latent dream thoughts" which are gained through
analytical interpretation. These latent thoughts are subdivided into
two groups: first, the unconscious, buried under strata of psychic
processes; second, understandable thoughts which may be localized in
psychic regions, and which in the theory of dreams are known as the
" preconscious." To interpret a dream thoroughly we must probe into
sexual wishes set aside in infancy but capable of renewal in a later
period. But to get at this material, it is necessary to combat the psychic
forces which tend to distort the dreanu As regards the element derived
from the unconscious, the development of the technique of psycho-
analysis, with its resulting uniformity of conclusions, has made it pos-
sible to interpret that element with a great degree of certainty.
II. The Dream and its Interpretation
The dreamer narrates her dream in the following words: (The
parts included in parentheses are her supplementary remarks.)
"I was in a kin^s palace as governess. The queen, an elderly
woman, wearing a Chinese dress with a long train, was about to depart
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ABSTRACTS 23 1
on a trip. I had to leave the child (whether a boy or a girl, I do not
know), in order to bid her farewell. To this end, I was supposed to
lie on the floor, but did not want to do it. Thereupon she struck me in
the face with a rod. Then I lay down, so that my nose touched the
ground. I thought to myself: 'So this is the good position I have
found! ' And then she struck me, until it hurt. Afterward she extended
me her hand, which I kissed. The queen then instructed one of hef,
companions to conduct me, as a reward, into a (Chinese) lavender room,
which was otherwise a forbidden chamber. As I entered, I was greatly
astonished to think that I had not been so badly treated, since I was to
have the honor of looking at the room. The companion told me that
there were birds here. Suddenly I saw a magnificent bird fly in from
behind and alight near me. He had a long tail, and bore himself in a
proud, springy manner, like a wagtail. His color was lavender, like that
of the room. Then I saw green oleander-like trees in blue vessels at the
entrance to the lavender room. The sun shone. (Through this door-
like opening I saw a garden and thought: 'Lord, if I could only go out
into the garden/ But I didn't get there.) Meanwhile, the steward, a
tall, thin man, had likewise taken leave of the queen, and was also al-
lowed to see the room. The queen told him that he must wait until I
had left. He wanted to come in anyway, but the companion said that
she had to lock up first. Then she unlocked the door again and he
came in. The companion — or chambermaid — received twenty gulden as
a reward. Then the queen pointed out to me a pink room containing a
pink washstand, whereas the first reception room had been yellow. I
surprised the king, a dark, stylish young man, who was dressing. (I
saw him first in the mirror, then in reality. He was brushing up hi^
hair; it was stiU wet and stood stiffly.) He said, 'Pardon me, this is
not your room. I excused myself and went out, thinking, ' The king is
such a stylish man and she such an old woman; he isn't at all suited to
her.' Then I met him again in the reception room and he turned toward
me, as though he were in love with me — I also could have fallen in love
with him — and said that he, too, was going away. (Thereupon, in the
yellow room, he again looked into the mirror, as if to convince himself
that he was pleasing to me.) Astonished, I said to him, ' So you're going
awayf 'Yes,' he said, 'I'm going away.' The chambermaid had to
pack the master^s things quickly. Whether or not they went away, I do
not know. I didn't see the child again either."
Rank informs us that the dreamer has for several years been away
from home, supporting herself as a governess. At the time of the dream
she was without a position. The dream is the fulfilment of her wish
for a good position, in pleasant surroundings. It recalls also the fact
that, as a rule, she could not agree with her mistress and was annoyed
by the master of the house. A second wish, that of a husband and a
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232 ABSTRACTS
home of her own, is also revealed, for the king represents the tjrpe of
man she admires. Behind these desires is the sexual "hotel fantasy,"
indicated by the entrance into a forbidden room, the sight of the king's
toilet accessories, etc
By the aid of well-established symbolism already referred to we can
probe still deeper into the dream. The queen and king typify the girl's
parents, the stem mother and the loved father. The entrance into a for-
bidden room by way of a reward is probably the distortion of an episode
in childhood, in which the dreamer was punished for having committed
a forbidden act. The fact that the governess must leave the child to
bid the queen farewell is based on the fact that the dreamer, upon ceas-
ing to be a child, left home in order to rid herself of her domineering
mother. The departure of the queen is the fulfilment of an erotic child-
hood wish that her mother might depart and leave her alone with her
father. Why, however, a girl should have dreamed of a forbidden
room — ^which usually symbolizes a woman — ^was not clear to Rank until
he heard the continuation of the dream.
The Dream, Part 2
"1 was back home, walking in the fields. (/ looked toward the rail-
way station and saw a young man, H., coming from there, I looked to see
whether he was really coming, but he remained standing on the same spot.
Soon I was unable to see him any more. Then a lovely turnip field, mth
large, beautiful leaves, caught my attention.) I cut off splendid ears of
barley and corn. I was surprised that the barley should be ripe ahead of
the com, when just the reverse is true. At the same time, the ears
struck me as being unusually beautiful, full, and ripe. I put the ears I
had cut off into my apron, so that I wouldn't be talked about, and went
home. I passed the mill, near which a friend of my youth, Z., was
emerging from the bathhouse. He took off his hat to me. He went to
the field in which I had been. I wanted to prevent his speaking to me,
for I thought: 'He is certainly going to look at the barley, and wiU see
that I have cut off the ears! (It suddenly grew muddy, a fact which
surprised me, since it had not rained in the meantime.) As I drew near
home, I met a girl. A., who stood in front of the door (and had a dog
with her) and held something black in her hand. She asked, * Where do
you come from?' '/ was walking,' I said. Then she saw the ears pro-
truding from my apron — a thing which did not please me — and said, ' I
suppose you gathered those for your housekeepers hens? ' I said, ' Yes.'
Nearby stood another companion, B. The first girl, A., said, 'She is
also here from Vienna.' I said, 'Is that sof Then she said that she
was not on speaking terms with B., and I answered, ' I am also angry at
her.' A. accompanied me a little farther. We passed B., who stopped
me. (While we spoke to one another, A. had curled herself up near the
gate, and was stirring the ground with a stick, pretending that she wasn't
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ABSTRACTS 233
listening to us.) B. asked, 'Where were youf I said, 'Walking/
'What have you in your apron?' 'Ears.' 'Was the corn cut, then?'
' Yes.' ' Then I suppose you gathered them together after the reaping? '
I said yes, for I didn't want to betray the fact that I had torn them off.
She had needlework in her hand. Through the open gate I saw her
garden, which was very alluring to me. Then she asked me if I couldn't
go home with her. I said, ' Yes, hut first I must bring the ears home.'
The housekeeper was glad when I gave her the ears and remarked that,
as a result, the hens would lay fine eggs. Then I was in my friend B.'s
house; we were naked and fondled each other. . . /'
- *-
Close inspection reveals the same elements present in the two
dreams, though in different guises. The king is represented by the
young man emerging from the bathhouse ; the bird appears again as the
hens; there is a forbidden garden in each; the bundle of ears corre-
sponds to the queen's bundle of rods. The forbidden room episode,
which runs through folk-lore (cf. the story of "Bluebeard"), symbol-
izes that act forbidden to children: masturbation. The forbidden ears
of corn have the same meaning. The similarity between the words ear
(Ahre) and honor (Ehre) is significant
The dreamer's meeting with the young man refers to a meeting with
her former fiance in the summer preceding the dream, when she was
visiting her home. More recent incidents bearing on the dream were
the girl's admiration of a beautiful bird, the reading of an article on the
Chinese, and a discussion on the Eskimo custom of rubbing noses. The
fact that the dream took place on the night before St. Nicholas Eve
(December 6) awoke memories of garments received from her mother.
The dreamer feared that she would not receive a gift this time, since
she had not kissed her mother goodby (cf. the parting with the queen).
Rank points out that the governess' enforced position with nose to the
ground is reminiscent of the punishment of dogs who are not house
trained. The mud and rain mentioned in the second dream are mani-
festations of early anal- and urethral-eroticism.
It is significant that at the end of the second dream, the girl found
herself in the same position as that in which she took leave oi the
queen. In the first dream the presence of her mother (the queen
thwarts her sexual desires. The absence of the mother in the second
dream permits the fulfilment of these desires.
Freud tells us that dreams in which facts are reversed (as, for ex-
ample, the ripening of the corn and the barley) have, as a rule, a
homosexual significance, That this dream has such a meaning is proved
by the following facts: The girl referred to as B. was known to her
playmates as "the mother," on account of her physical development
and her attitude toward other children. In childhood the dreamer had
"played father and mother" with a girl friend or her young brother.
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234 ABSTRACTS
always reserving the part of the father for herself. She was also fond
of wearing masculine apparel. The fact that in the second dream she
conducts herself as a man explains the significance of the room in the
first dream. Yet her womanly instincts reveal themselves in her atti-
tude toward the men in her dreams. Her bisexual nature is further
shown by the fact that she does not know whether the child (a personi-
fication of herself in childhood) is a boy or a girl The steward in the
first dream is her masculine counterpart. The reference to the Chinese
has, according to Stekel, a bisexual meaning, on account of the braid
worn by the Chinaman. Finally, thorough investigation into the girl's
character reveals a two-sided nature.
HI. Theoretical Observations
A dream is not the reproduction of one thought but — ^to quote Freud
— of a " web of thoughts/' reaching as far back as the unfulfilled wishes
of early childhood. The first dream (built up from recent events and
daydreams of the future) is interesting in that it presents in distorted
form the primitive sexual material. The second dream (the fulfilment
of actual infantile sexual wishes) is interesting in that it points the way
to the interpretation of this symbolism. The first dream, in which de-
sire is thwarted, is known as a " fear dream " ; the second, which fulfils
desire, as a "pollution dream." These two types of dreams are "the
end members of a series, in which the dream life of man is enacted in
the most varied stages and forms of disguise."
Analysis proves that normal as well as neurotic persons have psycho-
sexual constitutions and sexual experiences in childhood. The differ-
ence between them lies in the fact that normal beings can control these
complexes without harm to themselves. In childhood it is difficult to
draw the line between the neurotics and those who in later life become
normal.
This abstract is of necessity short, and, therefore, does not show to
what a marvelous extent Rank has worked out its details. It is without
doubt one of the best and most complete dream analyses that exists in
psychoanalytic literature. It occupies seventy-six pages. Practically
every dream mechanism of importance is illustrated. A careful study
of this paper in the original is earnestly recommended to students of
dream psychology and to all those who have doubts as to the correctness
of Freud's dream psychology. Here they will find ample proof for most
of the theories set up by Freud.
6. Fantasy and Fable. — Between individual psychology and race psy-
chology there are certain close relations, which permit one to apply
. principles derived from the first to the second, and vice versa. Laws
regulating the formation and disposition of ideas, the development and
manifestation of impulses, inhibitions, habits, character building, educa-
tion, the formation of taste in the individual, are more or less exactly
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ABSTRACTS 235
applicable to the race psyche, appearing in such equivalent forms as:
spirit of the times, will of the people, public opinion, custom, ruling
taste, criticism, etc.
In his study of the connection between individual and race psy-
chology the author has profited by the works of Dr. Riklin and Dr.
Abraham on the same subject.
I. The Functional Phenomenon
Silberer distinguishes between the material and the functional phe-
nomena. The former deal with the thought content of the dream; the
latter with the manner in which consciousness functions in the dream.
The functional are usually characterized by an explicable feeling, such
as weariness, or ease, according to the manner in which the thought
operates.
II. Dream, Myth, Fulfilment of Wishes, Freud's ^-Systems
The dream of the individual and the myth of the race exhibit corre-
sponding elements. Every dream is important, for it contains suppressed
thoughts, disguised so as to please the censor of the mind. The same is
true to a great extent of myths.
Abraham has pointed out that, just as the dreamer is incapable of
understanding his dream, so the race cannot understand its mythology.
As dreams have their roots in childhood (the prehistoric period of the
individual), so myths are derived from the prehistoric epoch (the in-
fantile life) of the race. Moreover, the individual, in his development,
recapitulates to a very large extent the life of the race.
Someone has remarked that the long sleep of children is an
ontogenetic reminiscence of the days when men were seers and dreams
were reality. What we do know is that children live in a world of
fancy which adults cannot approach.
Man's unfulfilled wishes often take the form of supernatural power,
attributed to prehistoric times. Similarly, most fairy tales begin with
an allusion to ''the olden days, when wishes still availed." The his-
torical race-wish to be a mighty people is expressed in myths in which
the national hero is descended from a god.
Silberer closes this chapter with a reference to Freud's ^-systems,
which typify, on the one hand, elementary psychic forces, and, on the
other, those processes which seek to unify and sublimate the crude
forces. Speaking mythologically, the human mind, in its development,
repeats the struggle of the Gods for supremacy over the Titans.
III. The Functional Phenomenon in Fairy Tales and Myths
The struggles which take place in the human mind are symbolized,
as we have seen, in myths and fairy tales. Freud has identified the
Devil as " the personification of suppressed impulses."
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236 ABSTRACTS
Silberer analyzes a fairy talc, to show that not only arc folk-lore,
myths, and fairy tales built up according to Freudian mechanism, but
that a number of them reveal the mechanism itself. The story is as
follows :
A king's son kills his parents and ascends the throne. Later he
marries a princess, who gives birth to a daughter. Upon the death of
her mother, this girl flees from her cruel father to a distant land, where
she later marries the king. Her husband promises her that he will never
harbor a guest without her consent However, the wicked father suc-
ceeds in entering the palace, and causes the queen much suffering. At
last the villain is brought to judgment and forced to tell his life history
while bound with bands of iron. Every time he tries to lie the bands
grip him. At the conclusion of his confession a stone beneath him opens
and precipitates him into a kettle of boiling pitch, where he perishes.
The king's son (a strong egoistical wish) holds sway over his wife
(the reason). At the death of his wife their daughter (the psyche) is
in danger of being overpowered. Not being strong enough to combat
her father, she flees (the oppressed thought isolates itself from the over-
powering complex). She exacts the promise that a guest shall not be
entertained without her knowledge (the psyche opposes the entrance of
the displaced complex). The father succeeds in entering. As a result,
the daughter suffers (psychoneurosis). Through the father's confession
(psychoanalysis) she is released.
This tale, as most myths, contains a functional phenomenon, the
phenomenon of thought repression.
IV. Examples from the Domains of Fairy Tales, Myths, and Magic
Grimm's story of " The Frog Prince " — in which the princess is com-
pelled to take the frog home as her playmate — symbolizes a woman's dis-
gust for the sexual. The prince who is delivered from his enchantment
represents a freed psyche.
Enchantment reminds one of the compulsion neurosis, or of the dis-
turbances of physiological functions in hysteria. The evil spirit, or
witch, is in many cases a condensation of the idea of the sexual rival
with that of repressed sexual impulses.
In Grimm's "Fairy Tell True," where the opening of a forbidden
door gilds the culprit's finger, fear of discovery results in a psycho-
neurosis, accompanied by a compulsory attempt to remove the gold. The
compulsion lasts until the suppressed element (the opening of the door)
is brought to light through confession. That this story has a sexual
meaning is proved by the fact that the girl's confession quenches the
flames which were about to consume her.
Here it is the good fairy* who brings about the heroine's salvation.
^In the German version, the Virgin, (Abstracter's note.)
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ABSTRACTS 237
The god who rescues the hero of a tale is a projection of the hero's own
soul; a fantastic "dramatic person," who is able to perceive that which
the individual himself cannot perceive.
In many tales the heroes are given impossible tasks to accomplish.
And these heroes are for the most part simple people or else children.
The reason why children succeed in executing the impossible is that it is
they who in real life come closest to the fulfilment of their wishes.
The fact that heroes often become kings or lords symbolizes the
process of sublimation. The evil spirits never lend themselves to sub-
limation. They must be overcome by a magic sword (the will). They
flourish in the dark (the unconscious region) but perish in the light (of
consciousness).
A functional phenomenon in simple myths and fairy tales is the ob-
jective expression of feeling. Thus in the "Frog Prince" disgust is
embodied in the form of a loathsome frog. Likewise, the mythological
gods of light, storm, wisdom, etc., are projections of the inner life. The
wanderings of the soul, seeking purification, typify the mind's striving
toward harmony.
V. For the Comprehension of the '* Mythological Stage " of
Knowledge — Further Examples
Silberer points out that that conception is termed mythological which
has been succeeded by a more enlightened view of the subject. Thus, at
some future time, the ideas of our day will be termed mythological, in
view of future knowledge. Those ideas which are not comprehensible
appear to us in symbolic form. The symbol stands as an intermediary
between us and the truth. The step-like progress of knowledge is ever
working toward the goal of absolute knowledge. Mythology, in por-
traying a time when such knowledge prevailed, gives the race hope of
reattaining this power. Here lies also one of the psychological roots
of religion — ^religion which prophesies the return of man to his original
godlike state.
The myth, like the dream, contains condensed elements. Just as
the naive dreamer never attains a full comprehension of his dream, so
the race that produces myths never penetrates their inmost meaning.
In every age learned men have tried to solve these hidden truths. We
must not expect, however, that every myth or tale contains elements re-
vealing religious conceptions. Some myths are merely the childish-
mythological portrayal of a subject But all myths, like dreams, con-
tain a chain of thoughts, leading to a definite point
In a subtle manner the heavenly, human, astronomical, earthly, and
ethical elements are condensed in mythology. An example showing this
dream-like mechanism is the story of the migration of souls.
The souls known as " damp " souls are lured down from heaven by
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Dionysos, god of wine, who represents pantheistic nature as opposed
to the oneness of God. The dark, damp earth attracts the damp souls.
Their emotional life now resembles the restless sea. As the water pro-
duces living things from the dead earth, so the souls animate bodies
which would be dead without them. (Fertilization through water has
a sexual meaning.) They drink from the damp cup of Dionysos and
forget their higher natures.
The sea denotes the underworld into which the sun sinks, in order
to rise, refreshed, in the morning. Our spiritual sun, consciousness,
likewise disappears at night, to reappear in the morning. Sleep may,
therefore, be considered as the damp underworld of consciousness. As
soon as the sun, triumphant, mounts out of the dark, the soul starts on
its way to the light
Mythology pictures the souls as having butterfly's wings. When
they drop to earth, they lose their wings and go through the various
stages in the life of the butterfly. Unaware of their godly origin, they
change into a crysalis in the dark. But a drink from the cup of knowl-
edge restores them to consciousness. After many wanderings and
purifications they enter, new-winged, the Zodiacal door to the upper
world and return to their homes.
The descent and ascent of the soul is a functional phenomenon. The
ascent, typifying the feeling of freedom accompanying a climb into
higher mountain regions, may symbolically be applied to the sphere of
the psychic
7. The Psychoanalysis of Freud. — Bleuler says that Freud's follow-
ers are charged with being actuated by emotional rather than scientific
motives. Yet the very men who bring this criticism give evidence of but
an imperfect understanding of that which they oppose. Overlooking the
mass of facts upon which Freud has built his theories, they demand
proof. But they furnish no proof on their side. They base their objec-
tions on esthetic and ethical grounds, which surely have no place in a
scientific discussion.
Pansexualism
The most vehement accusations are directed against Freud's concep-
tion of the sexual in man. This is labeled, from the intellectual view-
point, as nonsense, and from the emotional, as disgusting. Yet sexual
desires are natural to all; they are the most repressed of the funda-
mental desires. Repression and hypocrisy concerning them are harmful.
Upon investigation, the great majority of symptoms attributed to
other causes are proved to have a sexual origin. Of the hundreds of
schizophrenic patients analyzed by the author, none was without a sex-
ual complex. In most cases, it was the dominating s3miptom. Contrary
to the inference of critics, the analyst was careful not to make any sug-
gestion leading to the disclosure of the patient's sexual experiences.
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ABSTRACTS 239
Many objections to the sexual theory would be overcome, if the
Freudian definition of the sexual were understood. The Freudian
" libido " embraces all positive strivings, even such, for example, as the
infant's desire for food.
Sexual desires in the child are evident to all who do not blind them-
selves to facts. Freud and Frank have found, through analysis, that as
early as the fourth year, the foundations of a later sexual development
are laid. Likewise, the much discussed " CEdipus complex," so revolting
to critics, is an established fact
The Mistakes of Normals
Many complexes are bound up with seemingly irrelevant thoughts.
Bleuler cites as an example the case of a man who, in repeating a
Latin quotation, could not recall the simple word " aliquis." Freud dis-
covered, upon analysis, that this inability resulted from the patient's
repressed fear that his mistress might be pregnant and so fail to
menstruate.
Association Experiment
The same concept is colored, at different times, with different emo-
tions. But analysts, versed in the methods of psychoanalysis, can detect
the underlying complex.
That other persons have been unable to isolate the complex from its
associations is due to the fact that they have not gone about the experi-
ment in the proper way.
Interpretation and Synibolism
Facts regarding patients which are accepted when obtained through
other sources are doubted when proved to be true through psycho-
analysis. Yet through this method, the same fact is not repeated, but
is brought forward in different guises, so that each time new light is
thrown upon it.
Psychoanalysts do not claim the absolute certainty and completeness
of every analysis. But since complexes possess almost stereotyped sym-
bols, which reappear in person after person, the experienced analyst
can detect these complexes with a great degree of assurance. Physical
reactions on the part of the patient, such as alteration of the tone,
blushing, trembling, movements of hands and feet, reveal much without
the patient's knowledge. Thus, the word "yes," uttered in certain
tones, can be interpreted as meaning " no," and vice versa.
Therapy
Psychoanalysis cures cases to which other methods are inaccessible.
Every one knows that the outward expression of emotion — ^as, for
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240 ABSTRACTS
instance, weeping— has a soothing effect; that, on the contrary, the
suppression of emotions is harmful. But when this principle is applied
in psychoanalysis, its efficacy is disputed.
It is claimed that the unconscious, disturbing complexes are sug-
gested to the patients by the doctor. Let, however, the patient follow
these " suggestions " to the end, and he will discover that he entertained
them long before the cure began.
Another argument against the treatment is that psychoanalyzed per-
sons lose their purity of mind. Bleuler answers it by this question : Is
it better to relegate one's repressed sexuality to the realm of dreams
and neuroses, or to regulate one's acts in the light of knowledge ?
Psychoanalytic therapy is still in its infancy; time alone will prove
its test
Criticism
Bleuler hesitates to criticize Freud, because experience has proved
to him that those Freudian theories which at first seemed to him untrue
or absurd were, in the end,^ correct. Moreover, many of his criticisms
are levelled at individual Freudian scholars rather than at the master
himself. That he should differ from Freud in minor questions is not
surprising, since in psychological, as in many other scientific subjects,
absolute certainty is impossible.
Bleuler points out the dangers of generalizations built upon insuffi-
cient proof. He is opposed to pathographies, such as those of Kleist,
because of the incompleteness of the material at hand, and because these
works are presented to a public unacquainted with Freudian theories.
Similar studies of literary heroes also appear unsatisfactory to him.
Concerning Freud's sexual theory, the author is not convinced that
infantile sexuality is much richer in autoerotic, somatic, and psychic
material than later periods; nor that the unconscious processes revert
entirely to infantile sexuality. Likewise, Freud's studies of wit do not
appear to him thoroughly conclusive. He believes that the future may
reveal a mixed etiology and show the relative parts played by sexual
and other causes.
Historical Relations
The sublimation and repression of sexuality has long been known
to poets and (at least the first of these) to physicians. Conclusions
formulated by Freud had long before been apparent to Bleuler, as a
result of his psychological investigations.
The conception of emotion as a quantity, directly proportionate to
the energy possessed by the idea which the emotion accompanies, is
not new. The transference of the same emotion from one object to
another is likewise a matter of common observation.
Bleuler is not prepared to state the exact relation between sexuality
and such processes as religious fervor, esthetic ideals, or thirst for
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ABSTRACTS 24I
knowledge, regarded by Freud as sublimations of erotic impulses. He
offers the supposition that scientific or esthetic urgings, primarily pres-
ent, are strengthened by the influence of the libido.
The relation of fear dreams and other manifestations of fear to
sexuality is not new to us. It remained for Freud, however, to point
out that a sexual repression or frustrated striving provoked the fear.
Observation shows that unconscious processes influence our con-
scious thoughts and acts. Many actions which cannot be traced to out-
ward circumstances prove, upon investigation, to have originated in the
region of the unconscious. The unconscious is such an integral part of
the psyche and has such influence on our whole life, that Bleuler does
not understand the Freudian limitation of its origin to the infantile
period.
In discussing thought association, Bleuler points out that an experi-
ence which arouses a certain affect for the first time creates that emo-
tion for the whole life. Later experiences similar to the first call up
merely modifications of the first affect This creation of affective tones
explains the tremendous significance of infantile experiences in later
life.
Bletder considers the Freudian theory of dream interpretation as one
of the greatest aids to the understanding of the psychology of the tmcon-
scious. Yet the mechanism contains gaps which demand further proof.
As to the question of bisexuality, investigation has revealed homo-
sexual tendencies in normal as well as in abnormal persons.
ResumS
Bleuler sums up his article in the following words:
"With the exception, perhaps, of the investigations of Heilbronner,
I know of no attack on the Freudian teachings which is to the point
Most of them rest upon ignorance in theory and practical application
of the psychology of the unconscious (Tiefenpsychologie). The attacks
against the therapeutic methods are based, for Uie most part, on Freud's
conception of sexuality, which his opponents unscientifically oppose
with ethical motives. If the Freudian sdhool has erred in the matter of
exposition and argument, it has been greatly surpassed in this respect
by its antagonists.
" The greater, I might say the fundamental portion of the Freudian
teachings is based in logical fashion on assured facts, and must, there-
fore, be regarded as correct. Furthermore, much of that which, accord-
ing to Freud's presentation, astonishes the public, is not new, but is
merely used in a new connection. If one is well acquainted with the
workings of the emotional element in our psyche, most of the Freudian
mechanisms will appear as self-evident postulates. One has but to
consider how great is their activity in reality. The rest of the Freudian
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242 ABSTRACTS
psychology is not nonsense, but disputable hypotheses, from which, in
the future, much truth may be precipitated. That in the fine points of
the entire school many details are problematical, too quickly generalized,
or directly false, is not surprising. It would be marvelous if false con-
clusions were not drawn in this freshly ploughed field and in the unend-
ing complications of our psyche, as well as in every other sphere."
8. Report of the Second Private Psychoanalytical Conference in
Nuremberg on March 30 and 31, ipio.
9. Concerning Criticism of Psychoanalysis. — ^Jung quotes a criticism
of Freud's theories by Kurt Mendel (Neurological Zentralblatt, 1910),
to show that such criticism is based, not on scientific facts, but on per-
sonal prejudices.
NOTICE.— All business communications should be addressed to The
Psychoanalytic Review, 36x7 Tenth Street, N. W^ Washington, D. C.
All manuscripts should be sent to Dr. William A. White, Saint Elisa-
beth's Hospital, Washington, D. C.
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO AN
UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN CONDUCT
Volume V July, 191 8 Number 3
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST-AWE^
By Trigant Burrow, M.D., Ph.D.
Ebos.
They put their finger on their lip,
The Powers above :
The seas their islands clip,
The moons in ocean dip,
They love, but name not love.
— Emerson,
If it were asked which of the manifold items which psycho-
analysis has unearthed had been shown to be the most vitally im-
portant factor, the answer would be, without hesitation, the mental
revolt against the sexual implication involved in the primary rela-
tion of the infant in respect to the maternal organism — ^the reaction
recognized under the name of the Incest- A we (Inzest-Scheu).*
1 Mss. received March 4, 1918 [Ed.].
Read at the fifth annual meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Asso-
ciation, New York City, May 4, 1915.
2 At the reading of this paper the question was asked upon what ground
the term "incest" could be made coterminous, as I here apply it, with the
conception of biological repression in general, it being objected that incest is
restricted to sexual relationship between members of the family of a neces-
sarily opposite sex determination, for example, between mother and son,
father and daughter, brother and sister.
In the anti-Freudian days, such an objection to the implication of my
usage would have been quite in order. But with the general broadening of
the connotation of sex through Freud's demonstration of biological sex-
ambivalence, the conception of incest is correspondingly expanded to include
the reaction of revolt against the implications of sex with respect to all the
243
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244 TRIGANT BURROW
Because of the basic significance of this factor in relation to dis-
ordered mental states, perhaps no subject can engage the study of
the psychopathologist with larger offers of reward than this of the
genesis of the incest-horror, the reaction technicaly known as the
(Edipus-complex.
Referring to this moral repugnance inherent in the idea of incest,
W. G. Frazer says that " the origin of incest is a mystery." I do
not believe it. I do not believe that this biological phenomenon is
beyond the range of comprehension, I believe that if we will follow
to their ultimate conclusion the genetic data of consciousness which
have been made accessible through the dynamic psychology of
Freud, we shall not only reach a solution of the innate repugnance
represented by the incest-awe, but we shall find that the solution
of this phenomenon possesses an almost self-evident simplicity.
With regard to this problem of the incest-revolt, certain students
have been content merely to affix the generic label of "Instinct"
and there to let the matter rest but if the incest-revolt is a problem
that is pertinent to psychoanalysis, we cannot be satisfied with any
such inclusive generality as is connoted by so broad a concept as
that of biological instinct. For the problems before the psycho-
analyst are, of their very nature, concrete mental problems. They
are problems of phylogenetically recent adaptations of conscious-
ness. The aim of psychoanalysis is to determine the reason why
of every reaction. However basic and original may be the source
of a mental reaction, as psychoanalysts our task is to discover the
dynamic wherefore of it.
Hence to invoke the oceanic concept of biological instinct is
inadequate to the criteria of psychoanalysis. Besides, if I under-
stand the meaning of the term "instinctive," it refers to an inher-
ent, integrative trend determining the specific reactions of or-
ganisms with reference to their particular species. Now certainly
the primary attachment of the child to the mother is instinctive,
^n its characteristic manifestation we are all agreed in speaking
of the " instinct of suckling." If, then, the revolt due to the recog-
nition of this primary fixation, or the incest-horror, is instinctive,
we are driven to the conception of two elemental and inalienable in-
stincts which are essentially opposed to one another — of two genetic,
members of one's own family whether they be of the same or of the opposite
sex character. Here then the term incest-awe is used to express the revolt
against the intimations of sex in relation to the members of the individual's
family irrespective of a differentiation as to sex.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST-AWE 245
cosmic impulses set at cross purposes. Thus it is to erect towards
an inherent urge of nature herself a no less inherent counter-urge.
At the furthest extreme from this biological position there is the
more widely accepted psychological statement. According to this
account, the incest-awe is due to the interdictions of society, to the
universal ban of convention and of civilization. That is to say, the
incest-revolt is regarded as the individual's response to a general
social prohibition. This seems to me merely b^ging the question.
To appeal to custom is to proceed from mouth to source. Such an
account is certainly not genetic. Social custom is a derivative, not
an elemental factor. The dynamic and inherent process of organic
law precedes the mere consideration of social bias. Indeed, to cite
social proscription as the account of a reaction as biolc^cal and
inherent as the incest-awe, is comparable to a process of reason-
ing which would ascribe to ecclesiastical ordinance the origin of
the religious impulse. That an argument so superficial should have
found adherents among us is of itself proof, it seems to me, of our
remoteness from the true interpretation of this reaction — ^that is,
from the genetic account of this phenomenon.
I cannot help feeling that the vicarious rationalizations which
have been thus far accepted indicate that the psychoanalyst is here
face to face with an almost insurmountable resistance within him-
self, that here is presented a crisis in the handling of which psycho-
analysis has very nearly met its Waterloo. I cannot otherwise
account for the general acceptance within the ranks of psychoanal-
ysis of an explanation which is not only utterly inadequate from the
point of view of logic but which so entirely abrogates the sworn
aims and methods of the psychoa^ialytic ideal.
I believe we shall gain a distinct advantage if in studying this
mental problem, we will, at the outset, separate our notions of what
is primary, subjective and biological, from what is secondary, ob-
jective and psychological — ^if we will separate our conception of un-
conscious, biological unity from our conception of conscious sexual
affinity, isolating from our conception of the conscious sexual life
(the so-called " unconscious," when subjected to repression) a con-
ception such as envisages a preconscious mode of consciousness,
representing the original state of the infant psyche. With this dis-
tinction in view, let us for the moment leave the consideration of
psychological mechanisms — ^the dynamic reactions we have studied
in the anlysis of our cases (reactions which I feel more and more
are effects rather than primary causes) and proceed to the study of
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246 TRIGANT BURROW
an antecedent stage of consciousness, the original phase of mental
life or the preconscious mode, as I have called it, from which as I
believe such mechanisms are a later outgrowth.
The relation between the mother and the suckling infant is
primary and biological. It is unitary, harmonious, homogeneous.
For the infant the relationship is an essentially subjective one. It
exists simply, without conscious arrangement or adaptation. It is
the one single instance of inherent biological union — ^the one per-
fect, complete phase of conjugation. It exists simply and of itself,
being exdusive of choice, of calculation. It is spontaneous, disin-
terested. Existing without object, it is, so to speak, one with life,
like the course of the planets or the growth of trees. Being pre-
conscious, it is in the truest sense unconscious. As I elsewhere ex-
pressed it, "the infant's organic consciousness is, at its biological
source within the maternal envelope, so harmoniously adapted to its
environment as to constitute a perfect continuum with it."* Such
is the character of this original biological union with the parent soil
— ^this mental oneness of the infant with the maternal organism.
This unity with the mother, however, exists only in respect to
the affective sphere — ^to the primary feelings and instincts. That is,
it belongs to the subjective life of the organism, for there is as yet
no cognition, no objectivation, no contrasting of the ego with the
outer world, of the self with other selves — no consciousness in the
habitual sense. In other words, this original mode, representing the
primary glia of experience, consists of an essentially unitary,
homogeneous, subjective, non-differentiated state of consciousness.
Now the demands of the world of outer objectivity or of con-
sciousness proper entail increasing outrage to this state of primary
quiescence. They more and more disturb the organism's vegetative
repose. Thus our primary nature shrinks from the intrusion of
those outer impressions which disturb its elemental sleep. And so
it may be said that Nature abhors consciousness. But with the in-
creasing importunities of reality there begins the gradual increase
of outer, objective consciousness. Slowly there is the establish-
ment of that rapport between the organism and the external world,
which constitutes individual adaptation. Observe that the process
of adaptation is essentially outward-tending, away from the ego,
that it is inherently a process of objectivation.
With increasing objectivation this outer rapport is later estab-
*The Genesis and Meaning of Homosexuality. Psychoanalytic Re*
VIEW, Vol. IV, No. 3, July, 1917.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST-AWE 247
lished in respect to the organism itself. Objectivation returns
upon the very self from which it set out. The self becomes its own
object and consciousness is as it were infolded. Being thus turned
in upon itself, the mental organism has attained a state of mental
development which distinguishes the human species from the rest
of the animal world — ^the stage namely of self-consciousness.
As long as the consciousness of self even though a process of in-
folding, remains within the mode of cognition, it is but the more
inclusive process of objectivation, and self -consciousness proceeds
smoothly, tmiformly. Even though there is the recognition of the
self in respect to conduct, the relating of the ego to the outer act, as
long as the process remains objective, consciousness maintains a
constant course and the result is a uniform process of adaptation.
But when this cognitive function applies itself to the primary af-
fective sphere, when this objective principle is turned in upon an
essentially subjective mode an inherent discrepancy arises, for the
subjective and the objective spheres being essentially opposite and
unassimilable, there is here an attempt to unite opposed and mutually
exclusive principles. It is to turn about upon the essential self. It
is to attempt to reconcile two phases of consciousness which are in-
herently incompatible — ^the phase of consciousness that arises from
the primary pleasure-principle and the phase of consciousness that
belongs to the secondary and adaptative reality-principle.
This disparity between trends that pertain respectively to the
subjective and objective spheres of experience is illustrated upon
every hand. The difference lies in the fact that that which we feel
(the subjective) flows from within out, while that which we appre-
hend (the objective) flows from without in.* In the first is repre-
sented the immediacy of affectivity, in the second the circumvention
of cognition, rationalization, reflection. The one expresses the
world of feeling, the other the world of thought.
My position is that these two components of consciousness are
mutually incongruous. Pure cognition or reason impairs the proc-
esses of pure affective perception and vice versa. The essence of
the affect of enjoyment is its spontaneity. In the presence of beauty
one is caught up by the feeling it invites and forgets to think. When
* The reason why the conventional, scientiiic student of medicine so gen-
erally misconceives the nature of the psychological problems of individual
life lies in the fact that the objectively trained expert lacks access to the sub-
jective sphere of perception through which alone any possible glimmer of
understanding of these intricate processes is made manifest
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248 TRIGANT BUBROW
asked to think about it one is, as we say, '* brotigfat down to earth
again/' that is, he has left the realm of feeling and encountered
again the world of " hard " fact'
Everywhere there is seen this discrepancy between consciousness
as feeling and consciousness as thought — ^that is, between the sub-
jective and the objective spheres of consciousness.
The intuitive, artistic, inspirational type of personality — ^the sub-
jective individual — senses his world through a process of subjective
identification with it. The critical, scientific, objective type of per-
sonality compasses his environment through a process of calcula-
tion, of comparison, of contrast. It is the nature of enjoyment that
one yields oneself completely to it — ^that he docs so, that is, non-
consciously. Conversely experience is robbed of enjoyment, of its
aflFective quality, when it is too consciously, objectively experienced.
It is so with music, with painting, with poetry, with all forms of
art appreciation, such appreciation being a process of feeling,
sympathy, identification. If this is true of aflFective appreciation in
respect of art, of nature, of the harmonious elements about us, how
much more is it true of the harmonious principle within ourselves —
of those organically subjective states of experience we know as the
reactions of love?
For Love is unity, participation, understanding. It is simple,
harmonious, unquestioning. Love is one with life itself. It is life
in its subjective relation. Cognition on the contrary pertains to
contrast, demarcation, distinction. Knowledge is ulterior; con-
sciousness strategic. Cognition is close kin to pride. It is one with
self as an end. In other words, it is synonymous with acquisition,
aim, calculation. Hence it is kin to self-interest, to desire, that is
to say, to sex.
It is my thesis that the irreconcilable mental conflict represented
in the incest-revolt is the expression of the inherent discrepancy
that is due to this reversal of life when the objective mental prin-
ciple is turned in upon the essentially primary, subjective phase of
consciousness. It is the conflict embodied in the opposition between
love as aspiration and life on the one hand and sex as covetousness
and self on the other. Thus in my interpretation the incest-awe is
the subjective reaction resulting from an aflFront to an inherent
psychobiological principle of unity. It is the revulsion due to the
impact of an organic contradiction.
• For example, see Rupert Brooke's poem—" The Voice."
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THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST-AWE 249
Such, I maintain, is the meaning of the horror of the incest-
revolt. I contend that the incest-awe is unthinkable except as the
objective consciousness of an inherently subjective mental mode,
that incest is the mind's recoil at the rending in twain of what was
before biologically simple and indissoluble — ^the primary, homo-
geneous, subjective ego. Thus there is no incest but thinking makes
it so. I have said that nature abhors consciousness. I may add
that nature will not tolerate the encroachment of consciousness
within the sphere of that primary, affective preconscious, which per-
tains to the original subjective unity and identity of the organism
with the maternal life-source.
In this view, then, the incest-revolt is the shock due to the im-
pact of consciousness with its inherent self. This is the meaning of
sex. This is the meaning of repression. This is the meaning of
sin. Sin consists not in nakedness, but in the knowledge of naked-
ness — ^not in the genital organ, but in the fig-leaf with which it is
concealed. It is to behold our nakedness. It is to objectivate and
render conscious an inherently preconscious, subjective state of
being. This is why sex is " impure." Convention does not make it
so. It is of itself impure. That is, it is not simple, not unmixed,
not unalloyed.*
* It frequently happens that young men, possessed of the popular preju-
dice in favor of " sex-functioning " per se as a requisite test and verification
of " manhood/' find themselves inadequate to the act, when favored with such
opportunities as are conceded by the promiscuous type of women who render
themselves available for such enterprise. A conflict is the outcome. There is
apprehension in regard to their " potency " and they consult a doctor.
I know that the popular view is in favor of sex-functioning as such ; that
in these cases it is customary to assume the existence of a pathological con-
dition calling for immediate treatment — ^" treatment," whatever its method,
having in aim the patient's encouragement to successful cohabitation.
In the light of the conceptions this paper attempts to set forth I am at
variance with this whole tendency of interpretation. If such individuals are
impotent to satisfy the sex demand presented in such commercial arrange-
ments, they are, in my observation, by so much the more adequate to fulfill
the requirements of the larger and deeper affiliations based upon the perma-
nent unions of love.
Even a so technically skilled psychoanalyst as Ferenzci (Ferenzci, G)n-
tributions to Psychoanalysis, p. 19) and a so faithful adherent of Freud as he
to the contrary notwithstanding, I cannot but feel that a psychoanalysis is of
a very shallow and short-sighted order that fails to recognize, in this situa-
tion, upon which side lies the alternative of health and upon which that of
pathology, and that does not assist the more constructive, conservative, in-
tegrative process that is shown in the individual's instinctive repudiation of
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250 TRIGANT BURROW
I repeat, incest is not forbidden, it forbids itself. It is the pro-
test of our organic morality. Its prohibition is inherent. It is
primary and biolc^cal.
Let us look at the testimony of the folk unconscious, as recorded
in history, in literature, in religion, and in language. The Biblical
usage " to know a woman " means to have sexual intercourse with
her, and there is the legal term "to have carnal knowledge of a
woman." Moreover it is the highest commendation of virtue to say
that a person is "innocent," but though this word means "not
guilty," if we inquire into the real implication of the term, we find
that what is actually conveyed by it is " lack of worldly knowledge."
That is, we are identifying virtue with ignorance, we are convicting
knowledge of sin. If we search for the genesis of sin — ^if we trace
sin to its psychobiological source, we find that this usage is borne
out by the facts connected with the origin of the moral sentiment,
as of course it must be, for the language of man cannot be else than
the expression of the mental biology of man.
No better proof is to be found for the psychobiolc^cal identity
of knowledge and sin than in the sources of philology. Through a
comparative study of language we find that the word " sin " traces
its origin to Latin, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon roots which signify
"truth." The Gothic word "sunja" from which the word "sin"
is etymologically derivable means " truth." " Sin " is also related to
the Anglo-Saxon " soth " which means " sooth " or " truth." Simi-
larly a comparison with the Latin and Icelandic forms reveals an
etymological kinship between words which mean " being " or " being
so" and our English word "sin." Thus we see that the psycho-
biological theory which relates sin with consciousness or knowledge
is actually substantiated by the records of man's earliest forms of
expression.
Consider too how all knowledge has had to struggle for advance
against the universal prejudice of "sin"; how from Pliny and
Galileo to Darwin and Freud the progress of knowledge has had to
contend against a superstitious implication of evil. Consider how
far more violent has been the outcry against the "knowledge"
introduced by Freud, by reason of the direct outrage to the sub-
jective ego which his investigations have occasioned — investigations
which force the primary mind from its pleasant immanence of
these dissociated and perfunctory trade arrangements. It seems to me that
in this instance the perplexed youth is biologically truer to form than his pro-
fessional consultant.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST- AWE 25 1
quiescent unconsciousness into the boldly disruptive actuality of
consciousness. But why this ban upon knowledge? Because
knowledge is sin. Because through knowledge is begotten the real-
ization of those organic reactions which constitutes sex.^
The fall of man consisted in his having eaten of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Here again knowledge is sin. This
is what is meant by man's " original sin." Thus again the folk mind
records in unmistakable symbols its intuitive realization of the in-
herent sin of knowledge. If we will read between the lines of the
Book of Genesis the latent thoughts that underly the manifest
content of this symbolic legend, we cannot fail to see the identity
between the idea of sexuality and the objectivation of the primary
consciousness. In Chapter II, verse i6, it is written: "And the
Lord God commanded the nran saying. Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil thou shalt not eat of it. . . ." And again, in reference
to Adam and Eve, we read : " And they were both naked, the man
and his wife, and were not ashamed." Later, in Chapter III, verse
7, relating the consequence of the disobedience of Adam and Eve,
it is said that " The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
7 This inherent discrepancy in human values which identifies truth with
"sin" is nowhere more blatantly shown than in the naive inconsistencies of
our public censorship of "morals."
In the theater we are presented with up-to-date " Reviews," contemporary
" Passing Shows " which, as everyone knows, owe their success to the care-
fully conceived sexual appeal they furnish. With their hints, innuendoes,
and double entendres these popular spectacles are made in the fullest sense
"suggestive," as we say, though of what no one of course by any chance
suspects.
But let some intelligent, earnest, clean-minded student of life attempt to
present upon the stage a thoughtful drama of human conduct in which the
reactions of life embodied in the perversities of sex are dragged from their
habitual retreats and thrust openly before the public consciousness, shorn of
their hypocritical cloak of respectability and pretense, and straightway a cry
of protest is raised that is not silenced until the doors of the theater are
closed and darkness again reigns in the playhouse and in the spiritual con-
sciousness of its proletariat audience.
Thus while "art" productions of the genus "leg-show" are quite per-
missible, such presentations as Henry Arthur Jones's " Hypocrites " or Witter
Bynner's "Tiger" are not to be tolerated because of their "immorality."
What could a£Ford a prettier illustration of the true, psychological significance
of " immorality," of " sin "? It is precisely the forthright drama which dares
to show the truth of things that is pronounced immoral Verily sin and
truth are s3monymous !
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252 TRIGANT BURROW
that they were naked, and they sewed fig-leaves together and made
themselves aprons." Again, Chapter III, verse 9, "And the Lord
God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And
he said, I heard thy voice in the Garden and I was afraid because
I was naked ; and I hid myself. And God said. Who told thee that
thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I com-
manded thee that thou shouldst not eat?"
Essentially similar to the Hebrew tradition of the fall of man,
as told in the story of Adam and Eve, is the Greek account of the
fall, as related in the story of Prometheus and Pandora. In both,
the Gods impose a prohibition upon just one thing. In both there
is an act of transgression precisely in regard to this one command.
" That is to say, the conscience of the Greeks and Jews, intent on
solving the mystery of pain and death, convicted them alike of
sin."»
This prohibition imposed upon hero or heroine against the doing
of some one thing which if done will bring evil is the central theme
of the folk unconscious as shown throughout the legends of mythol-
ogy. In the legend of Psyche and Eros,* Psyche must never see
Eros. If she does, he will not return. She contrives to see him and
so he is lost to her. So of Zeus and Semelc. Semele is beloved of
Zeus but must never ask to see him in all his godlike glory. She
does ask and is withered by his glory. In the story of Orpheus and
Eurydice, you remember that Orpheus can bring Eurydice back to
life, if, leading her from Hades, he will refrain from turning to
look at her. He turns and looks at her and loses her forever.
Again, Elsa must not ask the name of Lohengrin. She does so, and
he must depart. There is a like motive in the story of Pandora's
box, in that of Lot's wife, in the story of Proserpine and others.
In countless varieties of setting this same theme with its ever-
recurring prohibition motive is presented over and over again in the
allegorical symbols of the race-unconscious.
That the folk mind should be imbued with so deep a conviction
of sin, as indicated by this general prohibition motive inherent in
its earliest and most durable legends, must indicate some deeply
biological principle within human consciousness. It seems to me
that this principle is nothing else than the innate abhorrence of the
primary aflFective sphere of consciousness toward the ruthless incur-
sions of an alien objectivity.
• The Greek Poets, by John A. Symonds.
• See the charming narrative by Walter Pater in Marius, the Epicurean.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE INCEST-AWE 253
It is, I believe, from this source that has arisen the widespread
perversion of the human spirit which has caused the hideous dis-
tortion of human values embodied in the repressive subterfuge and
untruth of our so-called moral codes and conventions. I cannot
see the expressions embodied in these reactions of the social or-
ganism as other than vicarious representations of an organic law of
life — as the feeble efforts of man's immature consciousness to com-
pensate his essential nature for the frustation and denial of his in-
herent life. These distortions of life represent the organic outrage
to this innate principle of unity within him occasioned by the en-
forced encroachment of conscious objectivation upon his original
spontaneous subjectivity and oneness.
Thus man's "morality" — ^the code of behavior that represents
psychologically the zealously courted standard of conduct he desig-
nates as "normality" — ^is, in my view, nothing else than an ex-
pression of the neurosis of the race. It is a complex of symptoms
representing the hysterical compensations of society that are pre-
cisely analogous to the compensative reactions manifested in the
hysteria of the individual. As morality is essentially the pain of
the neurotic due to an intuitive sense of his inadequacy to the
demands of his own individual code of behavior, so morality ex-
presses equally the pain of the social organism because of its in-
aptitude to the requirements of the generic social code. The " hys-
teria " of the one is the " normality " of the other, but in both the
inherent psychological mechanism is identical — ^the mechanism in
the one as in the other representing vicarious compensations due to
the frustration of principles of organic truth. So much for the
morality representative of " normality."
Among the lower animals there is no recognition of sexuality;
there is no sin. There is no " morality." For they have not con-
sciousness, they have not eaten of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. That is, consciousness has not yet ousted them from
their Eden of unhallowed innocence, for the vital separation within
the psyche through the birth of objective consciousness has not
been imposed upon them. It is this extraneous interpolation in the
consciousness of man, this innovation causing a violation of the
primary mind-principle, or the essential preconscious, which I be-
lieve to be the psychological interpretation of the horror entailed
in the incest-awe. " Cursed is the earth in thy work," said God to
Adam. This is the universal world-tragedy, this is the conflict in-
digenous to the mental life, this is the doom under which man labors
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254 TRIGANT BUBROW
because of his attainment of the knowledge of good and evil. Such
in a word is the curse of life embodied in the repressed, distorted
reactions constitutive of sex and its disguised equivalents. Hence
the parable which represents the first man as an outcast — ^a wan-
derer sent forth under a life sentence of hard labor, to toil by the
sweat of his brow and reap in the end a harvest of thorns and
thistles. It is the allegory of the world's neurosis, the prodromal
of that universal anguish popularly interpreted as life!
The ban under which sexuality is represented as sin and the
consequent repression of this sphere in order to remove it from the
light of acknowledgment and deny it objective recognition in con-
sciousness is to none so evident as to the psychoanalyst, for it is
within the soul of the neurotic patient that this tragic conflict has
entered most deeply and with most vital consequences.
We who study the riddle of the neuroses from day to day and
from hour to hour have learned at least that these disorders are
essentially exaggerated states of self -consciousness, that they are
due to a confusion of the subjective and the objective spheres of
mind, and when we have penetrated to the innermost fastnessness
of the disquieted minds of our patients — to the repressed uncon-
scious — we find unfailingly that this conflict is synonymous with
the consciousness of sex and with the horror embodied in the
incest-awe.
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COMPULSION AND FREEDOM: THE FANTASY OF THE
WILLOW TREE
By Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., and Louise Brink, A.B.
Freedom is synonymous with perfect health, and either denotes
the goal of human striving. Both mark a return to the conception
of the older etymologists, who conceived of health as the wholeness
of man, which alone is perfect freedom. This is not the irrespon-
sible liberty to do that which brings immediate pleasure or gain, un-
mindful of social duty or accountability, of one's relations to a
society ordered toward the greatest good of the greatest whole. It
is rather that freedom by which all one's powers are best directed
toward progressive ends, and man has found through ages of trial
and error that these are communal ends. Such freedom, bound to
the social group in racial service, in reality releases man from fetters
which cut him off from his fullest powers and opportunities. Con-
trary to a selfish liberty, it sets and keeps these powers free from that
fullness of service which is creative achievement and grants him his
place in the steady advance upon which the race long ago embarked.
Curtailing of freedom does not lie in external restriction and the
limitation set by the differences and misunderstandings of the social
group. These after all are but the stimulus and challenge to the
really free soul. Fetters are rather within, self-forged, though often
unwittingly so. " Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death ? " The physician is intent upon this cry
as it comes daily to his ears. He knows well that the inner disease,
howdver slightly it is sapping the strength and limiting the ability of
his patient to take up the free and effective work which is abundantly
at hand, or however great the inroads it makes into the inherent
right of man to swing freely into the current of progressive thought
and action — such disease is bondage to some inner weakness, insuffi-
ciency, ineffectualness. The psychological physician, the only one
fitted to cope with this larger problem of man's adjustment to the
demands of life, in which lie this freedom and health, is still more
keenly aware of this question of relative freedom and bondage, which
condition man's success. For this is that sort of success that mani-
fests itself in the buoyant power of accomplishment winning its way
255
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256 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
from one goal of activity to another. The physician sees likewise
the compelling force of inner inhibitions and restraints, at least he
must witness the painful results and manifestations of these, and
realizes that his patient's bondage is in fact only from within. Inner
psychical fetters are the only chains that really bind the spirit and
interfere with health and achievement.
Obsession, compulsion, these terms are familiar in special mental
conditions where freedom is markedly curtailed and acute suffering
ensues. There is still failure to realize however how such inner
conditions, which are thus recognized in flagrant pathological form,
are dominant in still lesser form, perhaps to some degree in every
human life. The knowledge and power of observation of the physi-
cian grow to include many borderland cases, and those in which
only slight deviation or peculiarity marks a restriction of normal
power. These are finding a wider, more comprehensively human
classification, both better understanding of symptomatic manifesta-
tion and explanation for the same, and also a sympathetic compre-
hension of them as but differing degrees of the same struggle, en-
deavor and partial success, which pervade all society, all forms of
activity, all varieties of life's pursuits.
The wider training and fuller initiation into such an attitude of
understanding, appreciation and ability to guide to a healthy free-
dom, which are coming to be demanded of the physician, urge him
to look about him constantly alert and receptive to all that can reveal
htmian nature in its manifold phases. He must see these as but
varying expressions of the underlying unity of strivii^, effort, long-
ing, disturbed and thwarted by these inner fetters which alone con-
stitute disease and bondage, and thus condition ineffectualness,
failure and even death. The physician therefore at his daily work,
in the presence of disease in its more distinctive forms, or at his
recreation, where through art and beauty, gaiety and frivolity, it is
still human life in its trials and errors, its successes and failures, that
is depicted, is coming to wider acquaintance, keener discernment
and more thorough penetration and comprehension of just these
human problems. Indeed the theater, presenting as it does the artist's
intuitive knowledge of the unconscious, which lies behind the scat-
tered phenomena which we are accustomed to call the mental life of
man, affords oftentimes the surest entrance into the profound regions
of the human psyche. There lie the unseen fetters, and veiled in the
language and setting of art, the difficulties which beset every life are
revealed, while artistic skill discovers and points also the way of
release out into freedom and health.
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COMPULSION AND FREEDOM 257
The Willow Tree is a play of such rare delicacy of treatment that
superficially one might miss its excursion into these secret and often
somber depths of the psychical life, did not the final sacrifice grip
the inner soul with an answering response of the necessity as well
as the beauty of such self-effacing devotion. What is the compulsion
which has made this necessary, which silently convinces each spec-
tator of the same unescapable demand for a supremacy of self-denial,
which for the princess abounding in the joy of life ends not in free-
dom but in death? Why is human nature thus compelled, and free-
dom for one attained only by the complete vanquishment of another?
Some analysis of this "Fantasy of Old Japan" will perhaps
bring a sympathetic insight into the compulsion which is at work to
a greater or less extent in every psyche, preventing the complete ex-
ercise of one's powers, not always with pathological distinctiveness,
but with just so much limitation, suffering and actual acute loss of
power, opportunity, or Kfe itself. Thus every life is limited. So ac-
customed to it has mankind been, and also so rationalized into a com-
placent disavowal of his own accountability toward such a state of
affairs that his ages of culture, his systems of religion, his indi-
vidual ethics and moralities have been based upon, upheld and inter-
pretated in terms of inexorable fate, inscrutable providence, or an
inevitable subordination of the individual to heredity and environ-
ment. Only recently has it become a matter of serious practical con-
cern to investigate man's own individual psyche and discover and
release the chains forged there, it may be by heredity and by early
circumstances, but still individual fetters capable of release from
their inherent compulsion. If it is possible thus to attain at least a
greater freedom for a fuller life, with a greater intensity of achieve-
ment, if not an actual extension of the years of active life through
such release, every insight into the heart of man should be welcomed,
that truest artistic insight from the theater as not the least of these.
There is, this " Fantasy " tells us, a " wish in the heart of man,"
to which indeed life owes its inspiration and aspiration, but to it also
its entanglements and bondage. For the way to realize the wish is
not unhindered. The wish must for the sake of greater gains con-
form to other men, to that very society which the instinct of man
has constructed about his wish to give it security and opportunity,
and which therefore sets to it certain inevitable limits. This is not
the bondage of compulsion, but in the nature of man, because his
wish has not learned to fit the ego into the broader, social life of
greater advantage, the compulsion arises out of both the effort to
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258 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
realize without restraint his ego wish and the necessity of curtailing
and redirecting that wish in conformity to his social, cultural posi-
tion. The ego blazons forth, is rebuffed, through the very fear of
itself, retreats, hedges itself round by all manner of defense, ration-
alization, fear, inefficiency, the wish still strong within it, but unable
through the defensive fear and taboo which it has created to find its
way over into that sublimation which marks the higher freedom.
And it misses thus, through its self-made limitation, that increase
and enlargement which the wish, spuming the early ^foistic path,
might have found on the more open and effective paths leading to
and advancing the plane of sublimation.
Hamilton, the hero of the play, has lost his freedom. Ap-
parently he has entered a life of easy indolence and irresponsibility.
He is free from the sordid interests and futile pursuits of the rest-
less, feverish Occident and has sunk into a manner of life which
appeals to his inner nature and permits a freedom of moods and
dreams, which lie dose to the wish within his heart. London had
rent his inner nature. His love was engaged but it had to be lived
out in terms of establishment and the artificialities of motor cars
and social display, the standards of creature comforts and external
advantage. The woman of his choice stood for this phase of ex-
istence and felt herself impossible without these things. His nature
recoiling from this superficial approach, unable to master such forms
of reality and yet not willing to be enslaved by them, flees from
reality itself, turning instinctively to the heart of phantasy for its
escape. The Oriental languor and indolence of his remote garden
retreat are concealed under a simplicity which gives them a specious
justification to this man, sickened by the superficial unsatisf actoriness
of the life he has left. It is a veritable toyland garden into which he
has withdrawn. The seclusion of this tiny cottage in far Japan in its
miniature setting, where bright flowers are blooming and small foun-
tains trickling, is a far more fitting environment for his retirement
into phantasy than the conscious acceptance of such an ideal retreat
could admit. It is the unconscious child seeking peace, comfort,
even the self-inflicted pain of nursing its grief and disappointment,
which falls back thus easily to the arms of phantasy, to the mother
image eternally hidden in the heart of man. There he dreams and
dwells in the unreality of his ideal world, and there he hangs his
verses upon the willow tree.
Reality however with watchful saving grace comes keen-eyed and
seeks out those who have only let the immortal purpose of life be-
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COMPULSION AND FKEEDOM 259
come obscured. Even while they dream she touches unawares,
through the dreams even, the truer impulse and quickens it into
response. Hamilton's verses to the rain god give the first low rum-
bling promise of an awakening activity, and bring their own salva-
tion. The unconscious depths, harboring place of all the instincts
and impulses of the htunan race, though crowded ynth often hin-
dering and inhibiting emotions, affects, contain yet vrithin them,
stimulated and inspired by these same affects, the unquenchable im-
pulse to power and self-expression, which is the creative instinct
Active impulse and conditioning affect urge him in very fact to im-
personate the rain god of ancient mythology. All m)rthology attests
to the unconscious association of the mother with the heart of the
tree and her localization there. M)rths of birth from the tree con-
front us in the legends of such remote lands and cultures as those of
ancient Greece and the islands of Oceanica. That most human of
the religions of antiquity, which moved the heart of ancient Egypt,
devoted a solemn ceremonial to the representation of its beloved god
Osiris lying among the branches of the sycamore tree to commem-
orate his birth from his mother Nut. Nor is there wanting similar
abundant evidence of the power of the rain god over Mother Earth,
the strife with the heaven god in this capacity as the son seeks to
replace him, which is the concrete though unconscious struggle of
each individual to find in this manner complete power and satisfac-
tion with the mother.
This his phanasy may be his destruction, if the infantile wish
controls until it overpowers him. Therefore the hard world of
reality speaks opportunely in the voice of the sincere and earnest
Geoffrey, warning his friend against the madness toward which this
tends. This friend, however, type of blind self-defending rational-
ization, comes with eyes quite darkened to the reality that lies in
the dream, where the undying impulse arises after all and advances
to its own out of the source of pleasure phantasy. The young rain
god, because he is the embodiment of the creative impulse, cannot
remain satisfied with the mere dream of nearness to the mother.
The phantasied prayer does not suffice ; he must write out his poem,
" rather good poem, too, Geoffrey, I was rather proud of it." And
so in the pride of his creative effort he unconsciously rises from the
mother image toward his own salvation.
It is then that the embodiment of the mother wish, renewed in
the form that leads away upon the path of sublimation, comes to him
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260 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
with more than the marvel of his fondest dreams. The truest
presentation of the reverse of the mother-son wish, seekii^ to es-
cape its chrysalis of phantasy, necessitates that the father shall bring
this mother reincarnation, the younger woman made in the mother
image, but herself young and fair and therefore true object for sub-
limation and freedom through it. It is the father heart that has
given her birth, rediscovered and recreated her m the mother image,
from the mother willow by his power of love. He knows full well
the parent's reluctance to give her to the hand of another. Yet the
" dim old eyes " loc^ii^ out of the far mist of the past, this old man
" five hundred years older than his son," who in his haste with the
gifts of the world has made only cheap ccmtact with reality, these
eyes have the vision of the past and of the future that lies within it.
They are the eyes that look through the old tale from its farther
side in the l^endary past out into the need and demand of present
activity and duty. His narrative of the Lq;end of the Princess of
the Willow Tree is more than a prophecy, for it is his own soul's
history and that is the eternal conflict and victory. He has felt the
price of that progress which is freedom, life, the immortality of the
race. With determined mastery of the trembling which marks the
depth of the sacrifice demanded of the parent, aging and passing on,
he recites the l^end which yields to the younger man the object of
his seeking, which is to be to him at the same time his salvation
through the losing of itself for his freedom. Thus again the eternal
paradox, which is only the never ending alternation which Jung has
told us must always lie beneath life to keep it moving now and ever
toward its goal of progress but with the also ever recurring rebirth
from the fountain both of pleasure and of life.
Thus attained there dawns however the ftdfilment of the hero's
bliss. It seems supreme, complete at last, at least after he has finally
made his choice between this tender woman, newborn, and the old
world bqrond, which once more in the person of Mary Temple
directly thrusts its claims upon him. Now at last there is the freedom
of enjoyment, which seems to restore to him all he had lost, or
seemed to have lost because he had not really found it as yet
His is the delight of worship of the lovely creature, father-
created, yet in truth only actually brought to life because his faith in
her reality exceeded the timidity of the older man, who dared not
put the mystery to the test. His alone was the right in the power of
the younger man to call her into being, to breathe the breath of life
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COMPULSION AND FREEDOM 26l
— ^universal impregnation phantasy from the childhood of the race*
— ^upon the mirror which should then reflect to the woman all that
her living soul might mean to the man who would thus give life to
her and then take this life to himself. His was the task, moreover,
of bringing her to a knowledge of the real meaning of life which
was shared with another, lived not in dreams to itself alone. His
masculine spirit might rejoice in its creative power and the au-
thority which it had established over the being in his hands. Yet
the perfection of this creature no less than her innocent helpless-
ness holds him to a sense of his responsibility. The limitation of his
right and power by the power of love and devotion within her re-
deems him from a too egoistic goal to the more perfect life of mutual
adaptation and concession. Already she is winning for him a free-
dom from the inner compulsion which belongs to the mother fixation,
which demands that all shall be directed toward the pleasure wish
of the infantile egoism. A certain incest fear is also a barrier against
this and sets up some of the restriction which tempers the relation-
ship toward this embodiment of his unconscious ideal. At the same
time, since it is all unconscious, it occasions an inner conflict with
the desire itself, which makes the final decision toward England
and duty impossible for him and compels the woman's resolution of
the question by the sacrifice of herself. Who can say how much the
inner compulsion, arising out of this early infantile, strongly af-
fective attitude toward, the mother infused the ardent desire to give
life to this woman and appropriate her to his unsatisfied and disap-
pointed love, and how far it compelled the growing strength and
delight of this love until the sacrifice became unavoidable? Of such
^ inner causations are our acts merely the outward and often the
mystifying expressions. Freedom loses itself within the compulsion
and then must be attained in the end by the path of pain and loss.
If this course can be traced even so obscurely, until by such studies
the hidden life shall become more plain, the development of this play,
through its exquisite tmfolding, will not have been in vain.
It was in the hands of Hamilton to follow the path of self-
gratification and to have taught the woman that way. Instead, be-
cause there is another power than the infantile determinant, which
is working toward a truer freedom, and because he has felt this
truth perhaps from the ancient heart of the willow tree, he adopts a
»See F. L. Wells: A Summary of Material on the Topical Community
of Primitive and Pathological Symbols. Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. IV,
No. I, January, 1917, pp. 55-57.
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262 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
different course. The child that merely sinks back upon the mother's
breast there to have every wish fulfilled will only seek that which
pleases as the moment's toy. The mother image in its actual truth
is forgotten; in its place is substituted the so-called freedom of
having returned to the place where wishes come true, as the unrea-
soning child conceives wishes and seizes after their fulfilment. The
truth which the freed spirit within us seeks and finds is other than
this and toward this Hamilton turns. He has found that which
reality, accepted with the straightforward spirit of the adult atti-
tude, will reveal to all, but which is withheld from the autoerotic
self-seeker. This is the recurrent message of the play which opens
up the path of freedom and health.
The lovers, their faces thus set toward the freedom of reality,
enter upon a life of mutual bliss, but of mutual service likewise, to
be finally consummated only when the price of freedom has been
paid. Knowledge and experience dawn at first through the unsel-
fish consideration and self-restraint of the lover, often puzzled and
awed before the questioning innocence and complete trust of the
virgin woman before him. The double compelling forces are how-
ever at work. On the one hand, even in his chaste restraint toward
the object of his care, he is building up more strongly upon this new
object the old infantile sense of rest and peace and self-absorbed
enjoyment of its love; on the other hand, within her is the racial
depth of the mother soul, tending likewise doubtless toward the
pleasure goal, but yet with an ultimate truth and strength which for-
bids the losing of the creative goal, and wins it finally by its supreme
act. The heart of the willow tree, though ages old, has the immor-
tal power of revivification and rebirth for itself and the being upon
whom it bestows its love. It is old and yet fresh and young and
untried.
This pretty world of delight, of which she will take all as her
gift, which must be filled only with bright birds and pleasure and
hamdessness, is hers by right merely of claim upon her hero's love.
In it she may perhaps employ the feminine devices of pouting
jealousy, the aid of personal adornment, whatever will keep her in
playful touch with that which she counts her own. She will defend
herself by shutting her thoughts to the time when she must be old
and ugly and unattractive. The images and symbols, means of
pleasure and enjoyment, are at hand to be cherished and used. She
cannot accept the fish as the coarse mercenary dealer offers it nor
value the birds and crickets according to their market price. Pleas-
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COMPULSION AND FKEEDOM 263
ure for her must be a free and happy gift. Buying and selling it
in terms of gain are not to be conceived. Value for value is a part
of the lesson to be learned but never that perversity of sacred gifts
which makes of the emblems of love objects of barter and gross
nutriment. So at any rate may be interpreted the touch of appre-
ciation she puts upon these things, in the light of the unconscious
struggle which is manifest in the effort to discover and use life
aright. If we could value better and more truly the symbols which
are to the unconscious in fable, legend and individual dream, ex^
pressions and opportunities of the love life and its creative power,
we too might learn the unsatisfactoriness and the disease-producing
power, the loss of freedom in the abuse of these possessions. The
symbolization which finds itself in these things is too readily denied
and thus a cultural prudishness fails to see the inner value for which
these stand. This dainty personification of the ancient heart of
things instinctively and intuitively proceeds in her choice and val-
uation of them straight to their true inner worth.
The fish therefore must be consigned not to the kitchen but to
a home among the free swimming goldfish in the pool and birds
and cricket must sing and rejoice in happy freedom, such as that in
which she herself lives. Yet she knows none the less instinctively
the value of the masculine serpent god, god of comfort in the home,
to whom she prays for the rest of her lord by night and to whom she
finally entrusts him for his care when the time of her departure
comes. It is her love that spreads for Hamilton " that soft feathered .
cushion of his " for his repose. She is hurt also by the vehemence
of his love and yet shyly, smilingly proffers her acknowledgment
that she likes being hurt by him. He also must reveal at her ques-
tion love's realities, with that awe of the greatness of love that
knows self-restraint and asks reverently whether he has the right
to make the path to her across the snow, to her the butterfly more
white than the snows of Fuji-yama against which it flies.
Of such stuff not dreams alone are made but of such concrete
elements, touched here with a beauty surpassing in delicacy yet ex-
quisitely frank, does love consist, and through such concrete ele-
ments, hidden and revealed in the symbolism, does love in its ere- t
ative mission find expression. They are the forms through whicb^
is made known the "wish" which is "the most real thing in the
heart of man." Man has grown suspicious of the wish striving thus
to make itself known and, frightened, has sought to crowd these
thills out of sight, deny their meaning and value, until such repres-
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264 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
sioti has succeeded outwardly in bringing them to ill favor and
within in forming the fettering of the emotional life and its com-
pulsive direction of psychic energy into symptomatic paths» through
which the repressed factors secure a blind escape. Thus disguised
and not understood they yet control external conscious life but in
doing so curtail its freedom and limit the higher expenditure of
energy in perfect health. These concrete factors are too real, too
vital to remain quietly in the heart of man. The artist has dared
again and again to bring them forth, touching them gently, freeing
them through beauty, and so g^nting to himself and to those who
look upon and receive his work a corresponding freedom f rcwn the
disturbance and upheaval which follow upon such repression and
misdirection of these desires and strivings. He in this way opens
out the path to health in the right use of them.
Not the least of the mission of this charming fantasy, there-
fore, lies in the placing thus beautifully and wholesomely into our
hands some of the images and symbols with which the eternal wish
in the heart of man must busy itself. The delicate handling of
Ay these points the way to the sublimation, which comes not through
repression but through the artistic and thus transformed use of
these things. Their higher as well as their lower values are brought
to attention, each in its place and each in its own true worth and
beauty. Like the beliefs of old Japan to faithful, simple-hearted
Nogo, the stories and the language of the unconscious " make 'f raid,
make shiver." We have become so frightened over them, in the
long-continued effort to get away from their little understood and
acknowledged power and value, that we have lost sight of them as
very definite pathways which our own human race has laid down
out of the things of " beauty and eternity," and as the way which
leads back again to attain the knowledge which is mastery and
serviceable control. A clearer acceptance of them is sure release
from the compulsion to dark and hidden courses of feeling and
action, in which freedom is lost.
The profoundly moving message of the play lies however in the
larger synthesis which embraces and outreaches the wish in the
heart of man. It takes these lesser elements, the incomplete lan-
guage of the wish, and it brings them to conscious fulfilment. Still
more it lifts them through the larger purpose of the wish, as it exalts
and transforms that wish, up to the higher attainment of racial
service which society requires. Pleasant indeed is it for the lovers,
islanded in their romantic dream world founded upon the heart of
v^
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COMPULSION AND FREEDOM 265
things, to play and delight in these verities of love. Something
deeper nevertheless must be preparing, through which they shall
really discover and test the ultimate depths upon which love bases
its creative right to exist and the heights of service toward which
its creative impulse must soar. The truth and strength of the spirit
of love and sacrifice must respond to the clarion call of reality. The
eternal heart must meet the demand to lose all, or refuse and sedc
only the immediate pleasure. Before the crucial test the man stands
in bewilderment. His way is not clear, he is not free. Externally
he is not free, for he has a responsibility toward the dainty creature
whom he has summoned from the unknown for his own pure de-
light. Is it the mother image which he has unconsciously sought and /
which now holds him, through its very helplessness and dependence,
in the form in which he has known it, standing as the "terrible
mother," which Jung discovers in mjrthology and in individual
struggle, the unconscious image from which it is impossible to break
away? Is thus the path of freedom for service and achievement
barred, one's conscious purpose and wish rendered unattainable?
Perhaps to Hamilton the return to the very heart of the ancient "
willow was merely the return to the unconscious child wish. Hold-
ing now the mother image, which his desire has recalled from the
ancient soul of the race, it instead holds him and all freedom is lost.
He is powerless before even the call to duty for his " England and
George King." Action, to which the courage of his English friends
has been roused, is no more possible to him than it is to the com-
pulsive neurotic reduced through the opposing forces of his inner
conflict to a helpless inactivity.
One thing however is unknown to him. He is far from an
actual understanding of the inner source and meaning of his con-
flict and his inability to desert this woman whom he has made his,
to whom indeed his responsibility, since he has called her into being,
is clear. Scarcely better knowledge has he of the depth and reality
of the world-old mother soul. Not so lightly perhaps would he have
left his frail treasure that last evening to the power of her own
thoughts and convictions, had he been able to penetrate beneath the
blithesome, playful attitude of joyous living which had been his to
know. The woman's heart too, the eternal mother heart, attains to
but one way of freedom. Whether it is freedom for itself or for
the soul committed by love to her charge, it is found by the way of
sacrifice. Who can say, in the present mere dawning of understand-
ing and interpretation of the intricacy of unconscious motivation,
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266 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
which underlies conscious observed activity, and of the conflicts
waged beneath the surface, the extent of the unconscious inhibitions
and constraints? Here too the same compulsion in the struggle
^ between the pleasure wish on the one hand and the upward striving
of the eternal wish on the other throw about the mother soul the
fetters which destroy the action of perfect freedom. The effort to
overcome, to master the baser desires, those which lead back to rest
and the indolence of inactive peace, the effort to force on the cre-
ative urge defeats its own end and cuts off life itself. It is not
however futile. The defeat comes along the upward path of striving
and is therefore only apparent. The sacrifice is not in vain. It is
one of those compromise results with which the race in its imper-
fection and insufficiency has for the time to be content. It is the
price too often of its greater gain, but the price is willingly paid and
for it the world obtains progress, stimulus to further endeavor, im-
mortality. The mother heart is to man the source and the symbol
^ of all pleasure and delight and comfort. It is also the eternal source
of the power which urges man, whether he knows it or not, onward
to duty and activity, as Hamilton was driven from the peace of the
garden home to face reality and find there at last not only his duty
but the consummation of his joy. Such was the intimation in the
** completeness of the final sacrifice of the mother heart, which sent
him to duty, to wife and the children which she had never had.
True to the deepest psychological meaning of the eternal mother
heart, the heart which was in the willow tree, not only the bliss of
pleastu-e was there for the child man, but it is the source to him of
rebirth, from which he goes into the world of activity there to find
useful work and the sublimation of the mother love, which alone
belongs to adult reality.
The world shouts to the hero who goes forth on such a path. It
boasts for him of glory, honor, duty. This spirit which is in the
mother soul, on the contrary, this victory which is the steady ad-
vance of the race, moves in silence and alone. The travail of a re-
birth, in whatever man or woman it takes place, is a victory in the
loneliness of an inner struggle, its own Gethsemane. Happy if
there is at hand the faithfulness of some humble Nogo, as there was
for the Princess, who, though sobbing with the abandon of a simple
soul, would yet lay the axe to the root of the tree. The shadow of
the sacrifice transfigures even him as he too enters into its power.
No threat of death or punishment to himself or to his honored parent
can prevail upon him to brii^ the sacrifice to pass. But when he
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COMPULSION AND FREEDOM 267
recognizes the claim of something within even him, which belongs
to the life of the race, he complies. All protest is stilled, and un-
flinchingly, uncompromisingly the task is performed. The tree on
whose standing the life of the princess depends is hewn down.
There is a peculiar fitness in the portrayal of this drama of life
in this kingdom of Old Japan. It is a land externally of peace and
delight. There is an outward perfection of cleanliness and trim-
ness and scrupulous care, which adds to the charm of its beauty. A
softness and delicacy and prettiness of nature are its own character-
istics. Its artists reproduce it and even the common people are
touched with its grace and flit about their daily pursuits with an
almost butterfly fancifulness and freedom of light and carefree
movement. Dress and manner and smiling face, even the ceaseless
slip of their sandaled feet or the click of their wooden clogs, all are
expressive of the simple playful character which lies upon the sur-
face. Yet a greater power makes itself manifest in their national
history and closer knowledge of their daily lives reveals also the
care and weariness, poverty, discontent, strife beneath this pleasant
exterior. Thus also in their pretty land do the frequent earthquakes
and actively eruptive volcanoes, which have produced the scarred
suid jagged mountain peaks, speak of a greater energy beneath the
surface, which struggles to break forth and having no guidance or
control works destruction and ruin.
Such forces, however, in the human psyche are capable of un-
derstanding and control, if man becomes willing to look within.
To such an insight this "Fantasy of Old Japan" is directed. It
grants more than a hint of the forces of desire which arise there,
meet and entangle one another and hinder the useful constructive
discharge of these forces. It points the way to salvation through
sacrifice, by which freedom from this inner restraint and compulsion
is attained. It offers far more than this, however, to the thought-
ful investigator who is seeking a fuller freedom for man, which will
assure to him a more perfect health, in which attainment can be won
by a more comprehensive understanding of these hidden things and
a greater freedom of constructive use and creative activity result.
This is a goal to be won in our present ignorance and insufficiencyj*^
by this path of sacrifice, but it opens a way of fuller knowledge of
the inner nature, which will find rather a more liberal exercise of all
its faculties toward a higher, more thoroughly racial service in a
more complete sublimation. It gives promise that this may in time
supplant the present curtailment and loss of certain powers that
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268 SMITH ELY JELLIFFE AND LOUISE BRINK
Others entai^led with them in the little understood desires shall
become free. Sacrifice has always been recognized as the " law of
service to the whole"; sacrifice must itself however be freed to
become more thoroughly constructive in a synthesis and upward
direction of these powers, not in the destructive cutting off of op-
portunity and energy which our present ignorance of the hidden
conflicting psychic forces necessitates.
" So long as we are blindly and ignorantly rolled about by the
forces of our nature/* Matthew Arnold has said, "their contradic-
tion baffles us and lames us; so soon as we have clearly discerned
what they are, and begun to apply to them a law of measure, control,
and guidance, they may be made to work for our good and to carry
us forward." In knowledge of these forces lies individual and
social health, that ideal of social health in which men and women
are no longer struggling at cross purposes, but united in mutual and
ever widening achievement. The drama, by each appeal to look into
the inner center of these forces, advances by so much our knowledge
and understanding. For by its beauty it attracts to the heart of
things, by its truth it convinces of the reality found there.
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A CASE OF CHILDHOOD CONFUCTS WITH PROMINENT
REFERENCE TO THE URINARY SYSTEM; WITH
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON URINARY
SYMPTOMS IN THE PSYCHONEUROSES
AND PSYCHOSES^
By C. Macfie Campbell
JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL
Beneath the stream of the adult life childhood undercurrents
flow on steadily, not infrequently betraying their presence by eddies
on the surface; of recent years the ever-widening recognition of
this principle has been a prominent feature of psychopathological
research. To detect these undercurrents, to give its due value to
each delicate component force in the adult life is a task requiring a
nice discrimination. The validity of the conclusions in the indi-
vidual case can only be established by means of a wide corroborative
material, and to those unfamiliar with this material the conclusions
often seem arbitrary; this explains in part the scepticism shown
with regard to many of the results derived from the intensive study
of the psychoneuroses in the adult. A genetic psychology, based on
the more profound insight into the mechanisms of the adult psycho-
neuroses, must be supported by the direct study of normal and of
neurotic children. An example of such a study is the well-known
communication of Freud on the phobia of five-year-old Hans.*
This study, however, loses much of its value owing to the indis-
creet questioning of the father and the over-refined interpretations
of Freud; in order to be convincing, data must be obtained more
spontaneously and must not require such an elaborate interpretation.
The aim of the present communication is to present the case of
a girl, who was studied from the age of seven to the age of eleven at
the dispensary ; at the end of that period she spontaneously gave the
key to her symptoms, the meaning of which had been long sus-
1 Read before the New York Psychiatrical Society, January 2, 1918.
* Analyse der Phobie eines funfjahrigen Knaben. Mitgeteilt von Sigm.
Freud. Jahrb. f. psychoan. u. psychopath. Forsch. Bd. I. Abstracted in The
Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. Ill, No. i (January, 1916).
269
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270 C. MACFIB CAMPBELL
pected. At first the most prominent symptom was an obsessive
questioning, which seemed to indicate an intense curiosity which
did not dare to seek direct satisfaction; later her unusual interest
in water and in the plumber's sphere attracted attention, and this
was apparently the indirect expression of her interest in her own
urinary apparatus. Her extraordinary interest in the urinary ap-
paratus was accompanied by various anomalies of urination. At
last she told naively how she derived pleasure from her urinary
behavior, and in this pleasure there was a sexual as well as a uri-
nary component.
The frank admission of the pleasurable nature of the urinary
activity in this case throws light on many cases with urinary symp-
toms in childhood; enuresis diuma or nocturna may be due not to
any physiological inferiority but to the fact that it yields a certain
pleasure. The pleasure, it is true, may not be acknowledged nor
even clearly realized by the child. In so far as enuresis nocturna
is the expression of the attainment of such a pleasure during sleep,
it may be compared to the later nocturnal pollution related to the
sexual system ; in both cases there may be no conscious conception
of a desired pleasure as goal. It is quite unwarranted to generalize
the above statement and to claim that enuresis nocturna is always
the equivalent of a pollution ; such unwarranted generalization has
done much to discredit the work of Freud and his pupils.
The value of the present case is not confined to the light it
throws on urinary symptoms in childhood; it also contributes to
the understanding of urinary references and s)miptoms in the adult
psychoses and p^ychoneuroses. In this case during the period of
childhood we see certain trends expressed, not altogether frankly,
but in a much less disguised and complicated form than is usual in
later life. What in later life is apt to be represented by obscure
undercurrents is here disclosed in the open at the source.
To illustrate the complicated form in which these same elements
may present themselves in adult life, a few cases chosen almost at
random may be quoted; these cases taken along with that of the
seven-year-old girl show how the study of the child and that of the
adult supplement each other.
The first case gives an example of a very complex setting for
the urinary symptoms; the patient presented an excitement more
schizophrenic than manic in type. On one occasion he drank his
urine and said it was the spirit of his mother ; he explained that he
urinated in bed by saying that he did it to purify himself. These
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 27 1
reactions are only intelligible in the light of the immature phan-
tasies of the child, persisting at the subconscious level, and breaking
through to the conscious level in the adult behavior.
In a second patient, a psychoneurotic with sadistic obsessions,
we meet the same elements, the drinking of the urine and the
reference to the mother, in the setting of a dream, which was one
of a series of urinary dreams. The dream was as follows : " I am
in a cave, there are enormous blocks of ice of all dimensions, in an
angle one of these blocks melts, which produces a little cascade
of water (this calls up a memory of my mother urinating in a
neighboring room) — ^my mother is in the dream — ^at the end I find
I have my mouth full of icicles and of fish-bones — ^at the slightest
movement I feel that all that is going to descend and choke me —
my mother comes to my help and, in drawing these objects out of
my mouth, she also draws a sea-anemone which was fixed on my
tongue and was sucking me." This patient as a boy had the idea
that in coitus the woman drinks the urine of the man ; he remem-
bered going on his hands and knees to urinate in imitation of a
horse; his sadistic obsessions were closely related to his morbid
delight at an early age in seeing coachmen whip the forelegs of
horses. These data recall Freud's five-year old Hans with his
phobia of horses.
A young woman, during a schizophrenic excitement, both in her
utterances and in her acts laid great stress on the same elements,
and these utterances and acts evidently symbolized her sexual con-
flicts and ruminations. At times she retained her urine : " I thought
I was hurting my own family when I did that (i. e., urinated) and
I refused to do it three or four times." She interpreted catheteri-
zation as a sexual assault, ''the gay young nurses came in to put
me in the family way, have a baby, not to urinate." She several
times tried to drink her urine ; when told to urinate she said : " Do
you mean it literally ? I take these things symbolically. ... I felt
that I was passing the water of the world and unless I drank it, I
was making other people drink it. . . . I'm handing my urine to
my mother" (cf, the first patient drinking urine, the spirit of his
mother; and the icicles in the mouth of the dreamer). The sexual
symbolism of urination was obvious ; she said to the physician, " if
you make water in my mouth I will drink it." She claimed that in
early life, during perverse sexual relations, a relative had asked
her to urinate in his mouth ; it is possible that this was a phantasy,
but it indicated how closely urination and drinking urine were as-
sociated in her mind with sexual intercourse.
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272 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
In the above cases the urinary behavior and the references to
urination show its symbolic value, its significance as a sexual ac-
tivity; but the symbolism in these cases does not seem to develop
because urination is in itself a source of gratification nor because
it is directly influenced by or influences the sexual function. These
cases show that urination may symbolize sexual intercourse for
other reasons than because the activity of one system can directly
excite the activity of the other system. The symbolism is here not
explained by the frequent conjoined activity of the two systems, it
does not arise in the same manner as a conditioned reflex; it is
based rather on the similarity of the two functions, and on the
anatomical "final common path." The child conceives the mys-
terious unknown in the only terms familiar to him, in terms of
urination. This childhood substitution of one system for the other
has to be kept in mind in interpreting urinary symptoms in the
psychoses, whether the symptoms be incontinence or retention, odd
urinary habits or obscure references to urine and urination. The
symbolism may not be specifically related to the sexual system;
the schizophrenic patient, who wets the bed and claims to be a
baby, utilizes the urinary symptom as a symbol of that stage of
existence to which she would like to regress in the face of adult
difiiculties. Even here, it is true, the symptom may be determined
in part by the actual gratification derived from urination, and in
part by the persistence into adult life of the early immature con-
ception of sexual activity.
The satisfaction yielded by urination is in some cases consid-
erable, as is shown in our seven-year-old patient and in the case of
a woman reported by Havelock Ellis.* In such cases the urinary
system has a direct importance as a source of pleasurable sensations,
and not merely a value borrowed from the sexual system. There
is no warrant for regarding this urinary satisfaction as essentially
of sexual nature, although the satisfaction derived from the two
systems is often inextricably blended. More than one somatic func-
tion yields its own special satisfaction, and to insist on reducing the
latter in every case to the common denominator of sex has for its
only sanction an unsupported dogma.^
« The Relation of Erotic Dreams to Vesical Dreams, Joum. Abn. Psych.,
Vol. VIII, p. 137.
* It is to be regretted that White in his recent work on The Principles of
Mental Hygiene subscribes to this dogma, which runs counter to common-^
sense and the most obvious biological facts : ** That all pleasure founds in the
last analysis in sex pleasure is an hypothesis forced upon the analyst by his
daily experience" (p. 299).
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 273
In the case reported by Ellis the extent to which bladder dis-
tension and urination may be pleasurable is strikingly shown. The
subject of his communication, a woman of thirty-five, wrote as
follows : " A slightly distended bladder is always exciting and the
act of relieving it is perhaps more of a pleasure than the discharge
of any other usual fimction."
She stated that in girlhood she had indulged in phantasies of
urinary orgies; "had I not, at a fairly early age, fallen in love
and led thereafter a normal sexual life, I might have cultivated the
art of urination for its own sake." The presence of a sexual ele-
ment in the satisfaction is certainly indicated, but at the same time
urination here seems to have an independent value as a source of
pleasure ; this fact differentiates such a case from the previous cases
where the urination derived its main importance from associative
material.
In a third group of cases the urinary symptoms are based on
the close relationship which exists between the activity of the two
functions, owing to which excitement in one system tends to irradiate
into the other. An example of this is furnished by a patient of
Freud," a young woman, who had an obsessive fear of incontinence
of urine; the basis of this fear was an experience when she was
under some sexual tension, accompanied by a desire to urinate.
The obsessive fear which developed omitted the sexual reference
and was limited to the urinary system.
The reaction to the conjoined urinary and sexual experience
may be simpler than in the above case. Thus a teacher, thirty-one
years of age, complained of a constant desire to urinate and laid
so much stress on the urinary symptom that her physician diagnosed
cystitis ; the symptom had developed, however, when she was much
distressed by erotic feelings, by " convulsions " in the vagina, which
were related to erotic reveries. Here there was no defence in the
way of a phobia, but a direct appeal for medical help with reticence
as to the sexual element in the situation.
The urinary symptoms may be utilized not for the solution of
internal conflicts, but in order to meet a definite external situation.
Urinary symptoms may be thus utilized by married women, whose
attitude toward adult responsibilities is immature, who have diffi-
culty in assimilating normal sexual activity, and to whom marital
relations are more or less distasteful. The patient may at the
^ Sammlung kleiner Schrif ten zur Neurosenlehre aus den Jahren 1893-
1906. S. Freud, 2« Auflage, p. 87.
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274 ^' MACFIE CAMPBELL
same time complain of sexual symptoms ; on the other hand no ref-
erence may be made to the sexual system, or it may be referred to
only incidentally.
A young married woman complained of vaginal sensations, of
an uneasy burning feeling, which made her sleepless; she com-
plained of frequent urination and of burning on urination. She
used douches as a treatment for the vaginal sensations. For many
years there had been dyspareunia and for more than a year marital
relations had been practically eliminated. The patient, immature
and egocentric, had accepted the married state without any of its
responsibilities, and for some time had been indifferent if not an-
tagonistic to her husband. The gynecological examination disclosed
no local cause for either the dyspareunia or the urinary symptoms ;
the urine showed no abnormal constituents.
In other cases where the marital situation is unsatisfactory there
may not be such a frank expression of the dysharmony in the sexual
sphere, the nervous invalidism may chiefly express itself in urinary
complaints. A woman of twenty-eight, one year after marriage,
felt a sudden pressure on the bladder with a desire to urinate. From
this time on she complained of pain over the bladder, of frequent
urination and the passage of large quantities of urine ; the polyuria
may have been due to her drinking a superfluous amount of water,
as in many cases of polyuria in neurotic patients. As to the origin
of the other urinary symptoms the patient stated that during the
first year of married life sexual intercourse (coitus interruptus)
would cause frequent urination lasting for a day or two, associated
with a feeling of pressure on the bladder. Owing to these symp-
toms marital relations had been discontinued after the first year of
married life; during the following four years the patient lived an
invalid life, she made the usual medical pilgrimage, was operated
on for retroversion of the uterus with no relief of the symptoms,
underwent prolonged orthopedic treatment for a non-existent tuber-
culosis of the spine. There was no gynecological condition to ac-
count for the symptoms; the urine showed no abnormal constit-
uents. The patient was extremely prudish, had married to get
relief from drudgery in a mill, disliked sexual intercourse (" if he
wants that, he can get somebody else "), resented the idea of having
children.
For four years on the basis of her urinary symptoms she had
gained immunity from marital relations. In this case the determina-
tion of the urinary symptoms, which were utilized for the evasion
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 275
of marital responsibilities, was not a complex associative process,
but the current development of urinary discomfort immediately
following sexual relations. It is not impossible that in this case the
patient derived a certain amount of satisfaction from urination, that
this function was in her associated with unusual gratification as in
the case of Ellis, and that it played a substitutive role of a positive
nature as well as being utilized in her evasion of marital responsi-
bilities.
The genesis of the urinary symptoms is less clear in the fol-
lowing case, where retention of urine developed in a setting similar
to that of the previous case. The patient, a woman of thirty-four,
had the same attitude towards the sexual life as the previous pa-
tient ; she looked upon sexual intercourse as " the most demoralizing
thing that ever happened," "if a home is peaceable that's enough
without kissing and caressing " ; she thought it degrading to have a
large family.
After the sudden development of retention with no obvious cause
the patient had to be catheterized by her physician twice daily for
many months; various diagnoses were made, "stricture of the
urethra," " tumor of the urethra," " ulcerated bladder," but compe-
tent gynecologists found no basis for these diagnoses, the local con-
dition being normal. Treatment by drugs, electricity, and mechan-
ical dilatation had been of no avail; it had, however, necessitated
her absence from her husband, and thus been of advantage to her.
In this case, as in the previous one, the question may be raised
in how far the urinary symptom itself was a source of direct satis-
faction ; in the case to be reported distension of the bladder was a
source of agreeable feelings to the child. The role of the catheteri-
zation is also significant, for the utterances of the schizophrenic
patient referred to above show the possible sexual meaning of this
act.
From the cases thus summarily reported it is already apparent
that in the adult psychoses and psychoneuroses urinary symptoms
may be of considerable importance, and their development a matter
of interest ; this interest leads one to scrutinize carefully anomalies
of urinary behavior in childhood to see whether they may throw
light on the problems of the adult. In view of the above con-
siderations it seemed advisable to report in detail the following clin-
ical history, which is an unusually convincing document.
The patient, Sally M., a girl of seven, was first seen in May,
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276 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
1913 ; for four years she kept in touch with the dispensary. It was
only after four years that in an interview she spontaneously gave
the key to her behavior. During this period the child had been
observed in frequent interviews; her actions and utterances had
been noted; no attempt was made to place before her the physi*
cian's interpretation of her symptoms, nor to elicit from her con-
firmation of the interpretation.
From the point of view of treatment the aim was to give her at
the hospital an atmosphere in which she could talk freely about
anything of interest to her, no matter what the topic might be.
This was considered to be very desirable in view of the strict re-
pressive atmosphere of the home. The father, an extremely earnest
man, took his religious beliefs so seriously that he would not ride
on a trolley car on Sundays ; he had been brought up in a Methodist
community where the sexes at church were seated apart. He had
been much distressed by the patient, when at the age of four she
refused to say her prayers. He had conscientious objections to the
patient being taught dancing. The mother was strictly conventional,
she reproached herself on one occasion for not having whipped her
two-year-old boy who had gleefully referred to hearing his sister
in the toilet. In such an atmosphere a child can not easily ask ques-
tions about many topics in which interest is extreme, and the curi-
osity which is balked with regard to tabooed subjects frequently
manifests itself in a less direct manner. Thus one of the most strik-
ing characteristics of the child was her insistent questioning, which
was often without rhyme or reason. She would ask her mother
about self-evident affairs, e^ g., "Am I still sitting at the table",
and in her visits to the hospital she was a peripatetic point of in-
terrogation. She was brought for advice partly on account of this
peculiarity, but also because she showed general nervousness, was
jerky in her movements, and grimaced a little. The teacher had been
struck by her odd behavior at school ; she ran about the room, could
not remember her place in class, staggered a little and seemed to
limp intentionally; she had, however, soon corrected her gait, her
school work was good, many of her questions were those of a pre-
cocious child, e. g,, coming in to school she said: "My hands are
very cold; if I rub them would that restore the circulation of the
blood?" The following brief account of her development was
gleaned from the mother's statements: In her early development
she had been rather backward; an eight months child, she began
to walk at two, to talk at three years. As an infant she did not
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 277
notice things until she was a year old ; she clung to her bottle for an
imusually long period {over two years of age), and then had to be
fed, would not chew nor put anything in her mouth. She seldom
played with anything, appeared to be very timid. When she began
to talk at three, she began on sentences and "rattled right off."
Her mother thought she had always been a great questioner. From
a very early age her gait was said to have been peculiar. Bed-
wetting was only occasional; she was very stubborn and wilful.
She was nervous and peculiar in her actions and appearance, and
during the past year had developed a marked twitching of the face,
hands and fingers.
Physical examination (Harriet Lane Home) disclosed chorei-
form movements and a refractive disorder for which glasses were
prescribed ; slight anemia and malnutrition ; tonsils slightly enlarged.
Heart and lungs normal.
Standard intelligence tests could not be applied, as she would
answer, "I don't want to think that." She was judged to be of
normal intelligence.
In the second interview (June 4, 1913) the patient showed the
same general characteristics as in the first interview. She was
fidgety and inattentive, answered questions as if she were very
stupid ; she pretended that she did not know the nature of the build-
ing, nor the occupation of the physician. She referred to a rela-
tive, Cousin Ned, and said " Cousin Ned is 100." In this attitude
of pretended stupidity we may perhaps see a sort of game, the patient
amusing herself at the physician's expense, teasing him or coquetting
with him.
The patient gave fragments of her dreams but no associations
to these fragments were obtained.
In one dream she was at Cousin Ned's place, Eleanor was there.
The patient spent every summer at Cousin Ned's ; there she played
with Eleanor ; and four years later the patient is to tell the physician
spontaneously of the sexual games in which Eleanor, the patient
and her young brother joined in the country (vid. note June 9,
1917). Whether she and Eleanor had indulged in any such prac-
tices previous to the dream was not known.
The utterances of the patient were bizarre and it was not very
easy to interpret their significance. For instance she referred to a
mosquito having scared her ; she said that the sound of the elevator
was like a mosquito ; " a mosquito climbs up on you," it sings on
top of her mother.
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278 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
In discussing Cousin Ned's place she referred to a young em-
ployee who imitated a dog and a cat ; she liked to imitate animals ;
she did not like to walk the way she used to, " a calf walks that way."
The peculiar gait at school may have been partly determined by her
experiences in the country.
In this early interview her attitude to the questions of the physi-
cian was already interesting ; " mother, when you answer that doctor,
do you answer him right? Must I answer him right, too?" We
shall see later how interested she is in the physician and his methods,
how she enjoys quibbling, how she seems to pique his interest, and
how finally she asks him to take a much more intimate interest in
her. In view of her questions about giving correct answers, she
was asked " Who tells you not to tell?" She answered, " Martha "
(a cousin in the suburbs whom she occasionally visits). These
answers were already rather suggestive of concealment of some
topics, and a coquetting with the question of becoming quite frank.
In the following interview (July 6) she soon broaches the topic
of the role of the physician. " Are you going to ask me questions ? "
(Yes, will you tell me the truth?) "I ought to tell the truth;
mother, let's hurry through." "Must I tell you? Must I tell you
now? When we go home? Is mother listening?" Her mother
leaves the room; Sally ^ows no change in her general attitude,
and does not talk any more freely than in her mother's presence.
She tells of several playmates; refers to James (12), Susie (8),
and Martha (8), whom she had already referred to in the last
interview as having told her not to tell (what?). They played
together in a daisy field; James and Susie played "chicken." "I
and Martha watch them. Must I tell everything?" (This hesita-
tion suggests that there is something foibidden in these games;
perhaps it is this that Martha has forbidden her to tell.)
During the interview the patient was fidgety and mischievous,
ran around the room in a helter-skelter way, regardless of the
presence of any one. She paid no heed to her mother. Although
her mother insisted that the child did not know anything, the latter
had a very "knowing" appearance and appeared to be extremely
"wise."
During this period the patient had been very stubborn at school,
she would not repeat 7 or 17; she had been punished on three
occasions.
At the next visit to the dispensary (June 13), on entering the
room she said: "Am I going to tell you something?" She behaved
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 279
in the same wilful way as usual ; she said that she wanted to learn
how to make baskets, having seen other patients doing this. In ref-
erence to the topic of the last interview, the games played with the
other children, she said " Am I going to tell you how Martha played
chicken?" " She played naughty, she played with James."
The patient was next seen in November; she seemed to have
better muscular control. She still showed the same tendency to
ask questions, but not so incessantly.
In the next interview (Jan. 17, 1914) the patient showed
distinctly coquettish behavior ; some of her utterances were difficult
to explain. She harped on getting fat ; " Sam (brother) is fat ; "
sfhe asked the physician to make her " fat by telephone " ; " doctors
make girls fat." It was impossible to mistake the coquetry in her
behavior; she sent the others (the social service worker and a
physician) out of the room and shut the door, then asked her
own physician to attend to her. Later when the physician talked
to a colleague who came in, the patient ran out, only came back
under protest and then ran out again. She wanted the physician to
find how heavy she was, asked him to lift her up: "Martha has
been made fat — ^by telephone." This proposal to the physician is
an early indication of the same trend which later becomes much
clearer when she asks the physician to examine her down below, in
order that she may have sexual satisfaction (June 9, 1917). Dur-
ing the interviews of the following three years this topic recurs again
and again ; she wishes the physician to make a physical examination,
she does not wish his role to be confined to questioning. Some of
her rather impatient sparring with the physician's questions may
indicate her dissatisfaction with his failure to play the role she
wants him to play. It is interesting to note that this is her concep-
tion of the physician's role; she conceives his relation with his
patients to be very intimate.
A few weeks later the patient spent one week in the hospital
for observation. On the road there she asked her companion " Will
I get fat at the hospital?" The recurrence of this topic suggests
some important determinant; it may be in relationship to childish
ruminations about pregnancy. In an interview at supper time she
told the physician to go away, said she was scared of him ; she took
her supper in a very untidy way, let custard fall on the floor,
laughed raucously. She exposed herself as she leaned far over the
bed in an apparently meaningless way (exhibitionism). She said
the physician was a " gobbler " because he said " gobble " to her in
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280 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
the "other Hopkins" (dispensary); no basis for this statement
could be found. Two weeks later, when questioned about her
sleeplessness, the patient said that she did not try to go to sleep,
that she tried to keep awake.
In an interview in June, with the other physicians present, she
was silent. She then lay on the lounge with her l^^s in the air
(exhibitionism). During the first half of 1914 she made monthly
visits to the dispensary and was allowed to play about with the toys
there ; frequently no special interview was given, as the aim was to
let her feel at home in the medical environment, to study her reac-
tions and to discuss any problems she cared to brii^ up. Her play
was as a rule ungainly and very crude ; her attitude was extremely
variable. No notes were made of several of these visits, but it was
about this time that she asked the physician about urination; she
wanted to know where the water came from and was told that it
came from the bladder ; she asked how it got into the bladder and
was told that it came from the kidney. The importance of this topic
to the patient will later become clear. During the spring her school
record was excellent; her teacher found her quiet and attentive;
she was much less excitable than during the winter. In the summer
she spent a week at a children's camp; there she was at first ex-
cited and overactive, but soon settled down.
On January 15, 191 5, she was again seen at the dispensary. On
the road to the hospital with the social service worker she recalled
innumerable incidents and conversations of the previous winter.
When seen in the dispensary her behavior as she played around and
during the interview showed decided improvement; she was less
boisterous, there was less general restlessness ; she had an occasional
barking cough and there was considerable grimacing.
She asked superfluous questions as in previous interviews and
in the foll6wing notes one sees a tendency to coquet and to spar
with the physician. ** Is this Phipps (Of course she knows this) ?
Is this nice play (She is at the sand-pile) ? You won't call me to
talk to you, will you? (" Not if you don't want to.") I mightn't
want to. ("Why?") Because this is nice fun — where do you get
the ink from? (The mechanism of the fountain pen is explained.)
And does it come down every time you need it? Suppose the ink
goes all out of it. . . . ("How old are you?") Two. (She per-
sists in this.) (And Sam?) Two — we were born together." Her
brother Sam is really four years old. ("Children don't go to school
at two.") " Well, they ought to. . . ."
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 28 1
When told that in previous interviews she had asked many ques-
tions, she said " I don't remember/'
She stated that she did not sleep well, that she played with her
fingers all night to make horses out of them. These references
to sleeplessness are of interest in view of a previous statement that
she tried to keep awake at night, and of a later statement about
lying awake till midnight and hearing something, and in view of the
role played by her urinary symptoms at night.
One day Sally asted the social service worker if they killed
babies at the hospital. (" Why ? No 1 ") " Well, someone says that
is where babies are born and where they kill them and don't they
kill them for crying and making a lot of noise? " It is possible that
in these remarks Sally is very guardedly approaching the topic of
childbirth.
As will be mentioned again the child seemed to be fascinated by
water ; reference has already been made to her questions about urine
and its source, the exact date of which was not noted. That this
was a topic of enormous interest to the child, and apparently a
problem over which she ruminated continuously, was shown in an
interview on June 19, 1915. She had come to the dispensary after
an absence of several months ; after coming into the consulting room
she shut the door (a point she had insisted on in previous inter-
views), and then abruptly pounced upon the physician with the
question: "Where does the water come from into the kidneys?
(" The blood.") I've never seen any water in the blood. (" You've
seen blood.") I've never seen my bladder; my bladder isn't liquid,
is it? Can you tell me all about that? Can I lay on the couch
while I talk? (In previous interviews she had occasionally lain
on the couch and had shown a tendency to expose herself.) Are
we going to have a talk ? (A somewhat cdquettish remark, and per-
haps with a reference to the fact that the physician's examination
consisted merely in talking, while later interviews show that she
would prefer a physical examination.) What is the screen for?
("For undressing.") Somebody might undress that somebody
might see the bladder? (In this remark it becomes quite clear that
in her mind the medical situation is associated with sexual possi-
bilities, and that the sexual is represented by the urinary system.)
Will you answer all the questions I ask? What is that pipe for
(pointing to waste pipe of washstand basin) ? (" It is to remove
waste water.") When I drink, I don't feel water going into my
blood. How do things go down by nature (Is she comparing the
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282 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
water-pipe of the basin with human anatomy?)? ("Where?")
In your blood."
She fingered her wrist and said: '*Is this a wall? like this
(tapping wall of room) ? What are the walls of your body? (She
says that her father had referred to the body-walls.) If I get sick
right here, will you do something to cure me?" This sugges-
tion recurs in the interview: She asks what would happen if the
elevator fell ; if she broke her arm, would the doctor have to care
for her? She stands on the couch reaching over as if about
to fall, and thus necessitate the attention referred to. If some-
thing happen to her in the hospital, the physician will have to make
a physical examination. This is the early foreshadowing of the
trend which becomes so explicit later in her crude sexual pro-
posals (June 9, 1917), when she says, "I would like you to exam-
ine me behind . . . because if you touch the tube (t. e,, genitialia)
it's nice." She harps on this topic : " if I get sick right here, will
you do something to cure me? ("How?") Maybe take my tem-
perature, put a thermometer in my mouth. Then are you going to
examine me ? " ( " How do you think ? " ) She refers to examination
of foot or head, of head and hands, of the pulse and the color of
fingers.
" Are you taking notes to talk over when I come back ? Shall we
talk more ? " The following is an example of her bizarre questions :
" Suppose mother cut a chicken's legs off, why would it break the
bone?" During a ride in the elevator she was much interested in
the mechanism, and lay on the floor; when told it was filthy and
would soil her dress, she asked what filthy meant.
The patient was not seen for several months ; at the next visit at
which notes were made (Jan. 14, 1916) she was less jerky in her
movements than before, but her conduct was still rather boisterous.
Her questioning trend was still prominent. She touched familiar
objects, said "What is this?" e, g., the feathers in a toy duck.)
"Why do ducks have tails?"
She showed her old trick of sparring verbally with the physician
especially when a third person was present. (" How are you getting
along at school?") "Why do you want to know? ("I am in-
terested in your development") You can't develop in school.
("Why?") Because you can't develop in school." She hops
round the room, throws the duck around rather aimlessly.
("How are you getting along at school?") "I don't know."
She gives the same answer to a number of questions. (" How is
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 283
Sam?") "You don't know my brother's name (Sam). ("How
old are you?") You know." This was her behavior when a
colleague was in the room. On the following day (the date of this
note is somewhat uncertain) she asks the physician if he will talk to
her later ; he assents. Later, when in the room, she runs at once to
shut the door (this she had frequently done before; cf. January 17,
1914). ("How are you at school? and at home?") "I don't
know — ^you don't want to know how well I am sleeping — sometimes
something keeps me awake — ^you don't want to know what keeps
me awake — ^you don't want to know now, do you? (These re-
marks would suggest an effort to pique the curiosity of the phy-
sician and as if her being awake had some special significance for
her; cf, her obscure spontaneous remark, January 15, 1915, about
being sleepless and playing with her fingers to make horses out of
them.) On the 31st of December the whistles kept me awake — ^you
don't want to know if I'm best at school — Glisten — ^is there a whole
lot of ink — ^the ink that comes down when you need it? How does
it know when you need it?" This interest in the pen, a tube con-
taining ink, may have the same origin as her interest in all water-
works, in the waste pipe of the washstand basin, in the flush of the
toilet, an interest apparently derived from her intense interest in
her own urinary system the meaning of which will later become
quite explicit.
The patient on coming into the consultation room had at once
run to shut the door ; she said " Are you going to have a little talk
with me — ^as soon as you get done writing?"
When asked about her sleep and dreams she said : " You don't
want to know — ^what do you want to know what I dream for —
have you been upstairs to see your class (correct) ? Did you go
up in the elevator? . . . are you through asking me? Do you
know what I want to ask you? . . ." ("Why did you shut the
door?") "So people won't hear me talking. ("What difference
does that make?") A lot of difference — every time I give a report
of my school to mother she asks me to her room so that Sam can't
see me — Sam might see me get punished — Sam oughtn't to see me
give a report of my lessons." The situation in the consultation
room calls up in association the picture of her being punished by
her mother, while her brother is not allowed to be present ( ? because
she is exposed during punishment; in the consultation room the
tendency to exhibitionism has been noted and will later be more
definite).
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284 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
The patient said that at night she had to get up to pass water,
more than once; this keeps her from sleeping. ("And in the day-
time?") "Of course I couldn't go all day without passing water."
("Do you hesitate to pass water?") "Why hesitate?"
As a matter of fact Sally's habits with regard to urination were
very striking. Her mother said that in the day-time she would
protest against passing water, and would sometimes wait until almost
bent double. Her mother interpreted this as meaning " she doesn't
want to take time to go/' while the sexual significance of it was
later spontaneously admitted by the patient. Occasionally she
would wait so long that she would wet herself before getting to the
toilet ; she would then not tell her mother that she had wet herself.
This would happen about once a week ; her mother would see her
sitting wriggling on a chair, and finally the patient would be un-
able to retain the urine. Three months previously she had uri-
nated on her father's lap a few minutes after her father had asked
her if she did not want to go to the toilet.
At this time (January 22, 1916) the patient's general behavior
and disposition were reviewed with the mother. Sally had since
Christmas been " awful " ; her mother had been unable to force or
coax her to do anything. Two whippings for poor school-work had
provoked no reaction, caused no tears.
As to food Sally was very capricious, and could not be made to
eat dishes for which she did not care ; the mother, however, was not
very strict in this respect — " if a child doesn't want a thing, I don't
make them eat it." Sally was irregular in her visits to the toilet,
and would at times become constipated and receive medicine; it
may be questioned whether the so-called constipation was not a
more or less deliberate retention of feces, associated with pleasur-
able feelings, similar to those which fostered the deliberate retention
of urine.
The child's marked curiosity about her own urinary apparatus,
about plumbing arrangements in general and about the mechanism
of a fountain pen has already been noted. The mother (March,
1914) said, " the child is crazy about running water. She turns the
tap a dozen times a day and would keep it going for hours, if I
let her."
On one occasion (191 3) the teacher had been called on to rescue
the patient who was trying to get down the sewer; Sally's ex-
planation was that she wanted to see what was in the sewer. A
long time after this incident, one rainy day when torrents were
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 285
pouring along the gutters and down the sewers, she remarked
"water can go down the sewers, but little girls can't." One day
at the dispensary (March, 1914), when using the toilet, she said
to the social worker, " cannot anyone tell me where the water goes ?
Does it go 999 miles into the earth ? "
The mother said that Sally took no special care as to who saw
her exposed; she was also scandalized at the child's habit of lying
on the floor and kicking up her legs, "it is not nice and, if I do
not correct her now, she may do something worse when she is big."
The mother intuitively felt that the behavior was more than the
healthy exuberance of a child, was the early indication of a rather
dangerous trend ; at the hospital the tendency to exhibitionism was
noticed on many occasions.
At home and at school Sally's behavior was erratic and somewhat
turbulent ; she defied her mother and would not yield to punishment.
She would put her sweater on the top of her rain-coat ; she would
grab a boy's hat and wear it at any angle. When given a note by
the teacher to take home she had torn it up, leaving some in the
teacher's desk and the rest on the floor.
Her teacher considered her quite intelligent but very erratic ; she
attributed her queer behavior to "pure mischief, not ignorance."
iAt ten years of age she was in th^ third grade; she would not
cooperate in the Binet-Simon intelligence tests.
In a visit to the dispensary on February 19, 1916, Sally behaved
in a rather typical way. She would not take intelligence tests
seriously, answered in a flippant or evasive manner. In a prank (or
was it on the chance of receiving some injury necessitating a phys-
ical examinatiqn ?) she fell down two or three times on the floor, then
left the room. She hid in another room, asked the physician to
find her, was found on a couch ; she burst out laughing raucously,
kicked up her legs, said she was kicking like a steam-engine.
She kept kicking and laughing for some time, talked in a rather
unintelligible way, finally ran out of the room. In this scene the
behavior of the patient could hardly be interpreted otherwise than
as coquettish in a crude and precocious way.
During the next month the report from school was one of odd be-
havior; she would gallop around the class, laugh raucously, throw
down her books, play with saliva in her hands. When in a store
she asked the woman innumerable questions, e. g., whether she had
children, why she didn't get some. The patient had previously not
expressed any overt curiosity as to the origin of children. Ques-
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286 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
tions as to the origin of children had indeed been strikingly absent
from the patient's repertoire; her mother remembered that Sally
had recently asked where her little brother Sam was before he was
bom.
April 29, 1916, Sally works at the sand-pile» taking pleasure in
making it very wet and splashing the mixture about. She does not
care to be interviewed, says she doesn't want to be asked questions,
doesn't care to talk ( ?coy).
May 18, 1916, her behavior is similar to that of the last visit ;
she dabbles with sand, does not want to go to be interviewed, " you
may speak too long."
In June the school report was that Sally was not doing very
well, and would not be promoted from the fourth grade. She was
considered to be a great detriment to the class. The boys were apt
to tease her, and she would become very ugly. The teacher de-
scribed her as immodest and said that she masturbated sometimes.
During the three years of contact with the hospital, and not-
withstanding the fact that Sally was on familiar terms with the
social service worker and the physician, she had given few direct
intimations as to the underlying conflicts in her nature. Her symp-
toms seemed to be the disguised expression of important instinctive
forces under the influence of an unusually repressive home atmos-
phere. At the hospital the endeavor was made to give the child a
freer atmosphere, in which she could discuss any personal diffi-
culties. Her obsessive questioning on every possH>le subject seemed
to be the expression of an insatiable curiosity, which did not have
a direct outlet; the questions about the urinary apparatus and her
fascination with all analogous water-works seemed to cover some
more fundamental interest, probably interest in sex matters. Her
exhibitionism, her somewhat coquettish behavior, her verbal spar-
ing, were all in line with this interpretation. Her peculiar disin-
clination to pass urine with occasional incontinence was also sus-
pected of being closely related to repressed sexual trends.
But though these interpretations were easy, Sally had said little
to confirm them; no attempt had been made by direct questioning
to get her to discuss any special topics. This was the situation
when after a year's absence the patient was again seen at the dis-
pensary. In this interview (June 9, 1917) the patient spontaneously
revealed all the underlying factors and threw a flood of light on the
mechanism of the disorder. Such a direct and spontaneous explana-
tion is a document of the first importance ; it demonstrates in an ab-
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 287
solutely convincing way the fact that at an early age symptoms,
which are apt to be looked on as the expression of some general
neurotic instability, may be due to the very specific but disguised
working of the sexual instinct. It demonstrates clearly the close
connection between urinary symptoms and the sexual instinct.
During the interview the patient talked very freely; the physi-
cian had some difficulty in taking down her rapid and jerky utter-
ances ; he put occasional questions to get a clearer or fuller state-
ment from the patient.
On the road to the hospital Sally had suggested to the social
worker who brought her, to tell the physician that she was dead ;
this might perhaps indicate slight pique at not having been brought
to the hospital for such a long period, it might also have a deeper
determinant; for in the interview she tells of her brother taking
sexual liberties with her when she pretended that she was dead.
At first the patient plays at the sand-pile, then comes to the con-
sultation room and washes her hands; then sits down. She asks
the physician if he is a "medical doctor"; this question probably
touches the old topic which had always interested her so much, viz.,
whether the physician merely asked questions or whether he would
not also make a physical examination ; the sexual nature of this in-
terest is later expressed in unmistakable terms. Her next question
shows that the engrossing topic of the interview of June 19, 1915,
is still in her mind ; quite aibruptly and irrelevantly she says : " If I
were to ask about the bladder and kidneys would you tell me ? . . .
What happens when you have cold in the kidneys, and the water
comes so much, every three seconds? Why are you taking notes?
You're not going to send that home to mother?" ("Have you to
go to the toilet very often ? ") " Sometimes I have to go every one
second (jesting?) ... at night I had to get up twice, the first time
I vomited, sometimes I get up once, feel for the chamber, can't find
it, mother won't make a light, then I have to go to the bath-room
. . . sometimes I used to wet the bed. . . ."
(" Do you drink much at night?") "Yes, that's one thing that
makes me go to the bath-room — I drink eight gallons of water at
night — don't you? — ^how much are you supposed to drink? One
night last summer I had watermelon, I wet the bed that night."
The fact that the patient drinks much at night would suggest the
encouragement of a full bladder and bed-wetting rather than the
opposite. She claims that she has not wet the bed for the last year :
" In the daytime when I haven't a cold in my kidneys, I just go
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288 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
once a day (the sexual basis of this retention is made clear later in
the interview). I go more at night time than I do in the day/'
Apparently quite irrelevantly, but with the suggestion of a repressed
associative link of sexual nature, she says : " Once a long time ago,
mother put me to bed about seven ; about twelve I was still awake."
("What happened?") "I thought I heard them (she passes
quickly by the t(^ic; does she refer to her having been aware of
sexual relations?). I dreamt that some one was going to take me
and throw me down the elevator pit. . . ."
Returning to the topic of urination, she says: "I have taken
five cups and then was full to the neck . . . every time I take water
I do it. My mother says Til be sorry when I get older. I do it
just for fun (her first frank admission of pleasure gained from the
urinary system). ("Why?") It's fun — ^it makes so much come
out of the toilet (an evasive explanation, which perhaps she does
not mean to be taken too seriously). You say the water comes
from the blood (information given to Sally in the interview of June
19, 1915), and goes into the kidney and into the bladder — ^where
does it go then ? " She is now approaching the real center of her in-
tense interest in the whole urinary system, and is indirectly, perhaps
coquettishly, leading the physician to discuss the sexual apparatus.
("It goes into the toilet") "And where then? ("To the sea.")
And where then? ("To the clouds.") And then? ("It comes
down in rain.") What ! my toilet water ? (" You drink to have the
fun of water coming out?") Yes — ^in order to have more water in
the sea so that bigger boats can float." She darts out this some-
what sarcastic response very rapidly, and it is a good measure of
her alertness ; she thus for the second time gives an evasive answer
to the question of what pleasure she derives from urination.
" Sometimes I get in a hurry, wet my drawers — that's the fun of
it. ... I like to make water. ("Why?") To let mother know I
have a cold in my kidneys" (again an evasive answer, sparring
with the physician).
She asks more than once about the notes which the physician
is taking, she asks about the couch, makes references to examination ;
she more or less duplicates the interview of two years ago (June 19,
1915). After asking what the couch is for, Sally comments on
the screen, " the screen is so you won't be seen if naked ; I would
peep round the screen (i. e., to see the patient naked). (" Do you
want to see people naked? ") I like to see Sam (brother) — ^between
the legs, he has a long tube, I have a short one. . . ." She asks
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CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS 289
whether if she were sick, the doctor would examine her ; the sexual
context of this question throws light on all her queries of the past
three years as to whether the physician would examine her. The
underlying sexual motive of these questions, although suspected at
the time, has not been beyond doubt. She says she would like it
(*. e., to be examined). If something were wrong what would he
do down there ?
At this point in the examination, or somewhat later, she says:
'^ I would like you to examine me there, and behind (partly exposing
herself), because if you touch the tube (the localization of the erotic
sensations associated with urination), its nice . . . it's nice when
I'm wiping myself. . . ."
She admits that she touches herself every day (mastuitation).
" I touch myself every day now down at the tube."
She says that wetting herself is nice, because in urinating " the
tube touches me there" (pointing to the thigh). "Do you go to
the toilet when you need to, or just when you're told (she has fre-
quently been inquisitive about the physician) ? . . . I only go when
I'm told ... it feels nice behind when I wipe myself, sometimes
I have to squeeze the dirt out, it's nice also in front ... if some-
body was naked (on the sofa) I'd peep — I'd like to see ... if I
was sick, would you examine me?"
The erotic feelings associated with the condition of the bladder
are also expressed by the patient in terms which one meets so often
in the psychoses as the disguised expression of sexual feelings:
" One day when I was \xy\ng to get down my clothes, I had to dance
around ... it looked as though I were trying to get away from
the shock of the current — ^the electric current coming out of the
batteries . . . when I'm in a hurry I've to dance around while un-
fastening my drawers, it's as if I were trying to get away from
something — shock of a current. . . ."
The patient not only admits frankly the sexual pleasure she
gets from her urinary behavior, she talks about various sexual
games she has indulged in. She tells of having had pleasure in
looking at her brother's genitalia. " Once Sam was trying to give
me a bath and he washed my bottom." After her weekly bath
instead of going downstairs, as her mother expects, she waits and
fools (sexually) with Sam. Sometimes in her hurry to urinate, she
does so in the water, " I like hot water." " I made out I was dead
once, he (Sam) fooled with my bottom — ^he was trying to wake me
up, he couldn't do it, so he unfastened my drawers, fooled with my
bottom— (" You liked it ? ") Yes."
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290 C. MACFIE CAMPBELL
The following account of sexual games may throw light on the
" naughty " games referred to in the interview of June 7, 1913, in
regard to which she had said, " must I tell everything?" She says
now: "In the country Eleanor and Sam were fooling with my
bottom, Eleanor at the back, Sam at the front . . . then I fooled
with Sam's front, Eleanor with his back . . . Sam's front looks like
he's laid an egg, sometimes I see the hole in his pipe where the water
comes out ... we do this every time we go down to the country."
While talking about this the patient is rolling about the sofa, partly
exposing herself.
Nothing requires to be added to the clinical history, which gives
a striking example of the complicated drama which may be staged
in the child's mind. The conflicts which this child of poor nervous
endowment found such difficulty in managing are due to instinctive
forces which play a role in the development of everyone ; and this
experiment of nature may sensitize us to minor manifestations of
similar conflicts in the life of the ordinary child.
In the light of this case it may be easier to understand other
examples of aimless and obsessive questioning, of precocious intel-
lectual research, of one-sided interests and fascinations, of indul-
gence in special games, of special attitudes to the physician, of toy-
ing with danger and with chances of injury, of eccentric behavior,
and of anomalies of urination and defecation ; and the basis of simi-
lar symptoms in adult patients may sometimes be traced to an early
period, to the complexity of which conventional psychology has failed
to do justice.
Summary
The clinical history of a girl, studied from the age of seven to
the age of eleven, who showed obsessive questioning, intense in-
terest in water and plumbing, a tendency to wet herself associated
with deliberate retention, bizarre behavior apparently of coquettish
nature, exhibitionism, a desire to use the medical situation for
erotic purposes ; the underlying sex interests and activities were only
directly admitted at the end of four years.
Reference is made to the varied setting of urinary symptoms in
the adult psychoses and psychoneuroses, to the understanding of
which symptoms the careful study of childhood material brings
valuable contributions.*
^ For material very similar to that presented in this paper one may con-
sult an article by J. Sadger, Ueber Urethralerotik : Jahrb. f. psychoan. u.
psychopath. Forschungen, VoL II, p. 409. Abstracted in The Psychoana-
Lvnc Review, Vol. V, No. x (January, 19x8).
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TRANSLATION
A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD
By Dr. H. von Hug-Hellmuth
Translated from the German by
James J. Putnam, M.D.
HARVAKD MEDICAL SCHOOL
AND
Mabel Stevens, B.S.
WELLESLEY
(Continued from page 227)
The making of plans with regard to a future vocation, by younger
or older children, likewise falls within the province of the imagina-
tion; although just here the suggestive influence of the adult is not
to be underestimated. The question which strangers constantly
direct to boys, in particular: "What are you going to be?" is now
replied to, in but few cases, with a logically framed " Nothing " —
as my nephew used to answer at the age of from three to five years.
Frequently, from sexual reasons, which Freud discusses in his " Drei
Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie,"* the boy's wish is to become a
"coachman" or a "conductor"; or, again, a "General," or "the
Kaiser" — which psycho-analytic experience teaches us to interpret
as "father." That this interpretation does, in truth, express the
child's mental attitude with accuracy is shown by the oft-cited com-
ment as to the glorious amount of freedom the children would have
then, and how the imaginary Kaiser would do everything which
father prohibits at home. The son's choice is apt to fall, at last, on
the vocation of the father, it is true, but not until the boy has hes-
itated long between a number of others, of very varied sorts; and
even then he is often moved, 'by unconscious feelings of hostility, to
• English translation Nerv. and Ment Dis. Monograph Series, No. 7.
291
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292 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
abandon this decision. A boy who, at five years of age, was pas-
sionately fond of his father, at that time wanted to be nothing else
but "a teacher, like papa." Family quarrels, however, estranged
the child from his father to such an extent that when the former
was in his tenth year he entertained a dislike and contempt for the
latter, and declared : " I shall not be a teacher. That is altogether
too small a position for me. I shall be a university professor."
Naturally, he had no suspicion that it was the remnant of his strong
love that determined him, nevertheless, to choose the profession of
teacher. A vocation which seems to almost every boy the finest goal
possible is that of architect, or of engineer. This preference is con-
nected in great part, of course, with the boy's interest in his favorite
toy, his box of building blocks. Indeed, he carries on his building
with every material which comes to hand — sand, clay, mud, dough,
stones, bits of wood, empty thread-spools, etc., all of which are alike
welcome. My nephew, when in his sixth year, used to amuse him-
self, for a time, every day, by constructing a water-doset out of a
meat-idatter and glass knife-rests. There was always a play door
(Spielttir), and he never forgot to divide oflF the space into com-
partments for men and for women, respectively. A bottle-cork
formed the lantern (he said) "so that the people could find the
closet in the night-time." Another boy, of five years, built in the
garden a fortress with ten gates and twenty " toilets " — ** for the
many, many soldiers." In this fashion does the childish fancy, even
during play, select those paths which we have already learned to
know in speaking of anal and urethral erotism. But love makes the
boy build beautiful villas and palaces for his mother, too. They are
intended for the mother, her son, and his wife and children. There
is never room for other people. Once when my nephew was making
building plans, I interrupted him by saying: "Well! And am I not
to have any apartment in your house?" " No," he declared. " there
is no room for you there ; and you don't want to live in the country
all the time." Then he added, hesitatingly: "Well, if you will have
it so, you shall have a room under the mansard-roof ; there you will
have the most quiet." In that way the boy relieved himself of all
the annoying and inconvenient "being together" with other people,
while he considered their wishes also. If in the case of the little
girl, in the later years of the so-called "play-age," the feeling of
modesty bars out many forms of play that call attention to the sex-
instinct, yet she does not fail to admonish her dolls (in all serious-
ness) to attend to their bodily needs. The delight of a little girl of
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MENTAL UFE OF THE CHILD 293
from six to seven years of age, over a doll given her by her uncle,
knew no bounds ; it was a doll whose mechanism permitted a gen-
uine movement of the lx>wels (Verdauung) to be imitated. The
child's joyful account of it to us left no doubt what a fine choice
her uncle had made : " The whole afternoon we have been giving the
doll something to eat, because then she can 'make' (do) it all over
again ; and we have always made her clean after it, too." Once, in
the same year, when the little girl — ^af ter playing a piece successfully
on the piano—was asked what she wished to be, she declared naively :
"A mamma." As psycho-analysis shows, a poorly repressed anal
and urethral erotism very often causes the care of her child's body
to be an (unadmitted) source of pleasure to the growm woman. And
certainly anal and urethral erotism influences boys very powerfully
in the choice of the future vocation, just as it does girls, and that at
an early age, because subconscious wishes lead them to desire to act
out freely these components of the sexual impulse.
In the question as to the origin of children a very broad field is
opened to the infantile imagination. Only at a very early age do
most children feel satisfied with the fairy-tale of the stork and
of the lake full of children. Soon, the change in the mother's
form during a new pregnancy, and then the " confinement" (Woch-
enbett) itself, both lead to the first doubts in regard to the truth
of these stories. The time arrives before long when children think
it impossible, or unlikely, that keeping the little new arrival warm
is the only reason why their mother has to stay in bed. Thus
a four-year-old little girl who sees herself incommoded and the
customary order of the household disturbed by the birth of a little
brother, declares that she wants to put herself in bed in mother's
place and warm the baby, so that mother can get up and prepare
breakfast. Likewise, the fable that the stork has bitten mother in
the leg does not retain power over children for any length of time.
At most, this fate is looked upon as a just punishment upon mother,
because she wished to have another child. A five-year-old boy who
received with aversion the news that he would have a little brother
or a sister in the near future, expressed his opinion on the day after
the birth : " It serves mother right, that the stork bit her so hard as
to make her cry; I do not need a brother." This hostile attitude
toward an undesired addition to the family arouses in the infantile
mind death-phantasies and death-wishes toward the little intruder;
although then, as a matter of reaction, these tendencies shift to ex-
cessive tenderness. W. Stem^® records as follows with reference to
^^ C u. W. Stem, Kindersprache, p. 62.
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294 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the second half of the third year of his oldest daughter, Hilde (the
little brother, Gunter, was about six months old at the time) : " In
an imagined conversation (Phantasiegesprach) with her doll to
whom she is showing a picture-book, she says: 'Just look, dolly,
look! That's a perfectly lovely picture, isn't it?' (Dolly says
'yes.') (Mother: 'You must tell her what is in the picture.')
* Aunts, and uncles, and Gunter ; and he's dead.' " Stem thinks that
"dead" is put in the place of "lying down"; while in truth, here
too, the Freudian conception of an unconscious death-wish might
well count as correct. Compayre tells of a four-year-old boy who,
armed with a knife, bent over the cradle of a ten-months-old infant
and disfigured its face terribly. Unfortunately, the information is
lacking, in this report, as to whether these children were of the same
family. As Freud and Rank have shown, infantile sexual theories
are connected, as a rule, with the process of digestion. Since the
little child rarely knows anything about the function of the vagina,
birth either through the anus or as an act of vomiting seems to him
entirely natural. Occasionally one meets with the idea that the child
is bom from the breast, more frequently yet from the navel ; that is
to say, either through spontaneous bursting of the body, or through
forcible cutting open. The first view might beget in the child the
pleasure in cracking seed-pods and in bursting buds ; the latter view
is mostly to be found in those children who, by listening, have heard
something as to the act of birth (Gebarakt) — some word or some-
thing done.
In spite of the fact that the small child is satisfied with the theory
that the mother is the only person who is responsible for an increase
in the family ; and that the question, " How does the child get into
the mother's .body?" usually arises, for the first time, in later years
of childhood, nevertheless, it is not uncommon to find even very
young children meditating upon the problems here involved. The
usual explanation of the origin of children is based on the digestion
idea ; the eating of a fruit, of a fish, etc., is the essential factor ; and
this idea, which harks back to fairy-tales, can best be brought into
harmony with the notion of the anal birth. Whatever gets separated
from the body in that way, must first be taken in through the mouth
— Whence, as food. Linked to this phantasy comes the oft-heard joke
warning the child that he must take care not to swallow fruit-pips
or else a fruit-tree will grow in his stomach. Moreover, the in-
crease in size of the mother's 'body even to shapelessness, agrees very
well with the infantile idea of what happens. This change is of a
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 295
sort that no child fails to notice. A purposeful repression, which
has nothing to do with childlike ingenuousness, is already to be seen
in the child's significant and insistent silence. The child from whom
these processes have not been kept secret as a forbidden thing, to be
met with averted gaze, expresses himself quite objectively and with-
out emibarrassment in regard to the change in a pregnant woman's
body : " See, Mutti ! That lady is going to have a little baby, pretty
soon" — testified my four-year-old nephew, to the indignation of
several ladies traveling with us in a railroad-coupe — while the future
father replied to the little fellow: ** Yes, and we hope it will be as
clever a little boy as you are."
To the child the sexual act appears no whit less erafbellidied by
phantasy-pictures. To this statement the objection might be ui^ged
that as a rule a well-guarded little child knows nothing about such
things ; but in making such remonstrance, one forgets how often, in
the best families, the custom prevails of putting the smallest children
to bed in the sleeping-room of the parents — doing so from the mis-
taken idea that the child will sleep the whole night, and so all the
intimacies of the parents will be kept secret from him. Now, as a
matter of experience, there are a great many children who wake up,
as a regular thing, shortly after their parents have gone to rest;
children do this from wishing, subconsciously, to intervene in the
sexual proceedings, concerning which they have learned just enough
to think of them as something special and secret, because somethii^
done in the dark. When the child becomes somewhat older, often
he keeps very quiet in his little bed, in order to spy out more. The
sexual act often seems to children a " rough and tumble " fight in
which the stronger person (Teil) overcomes the weaker. The fol-
lowing interpretation, actually given by a small boy, is by no means
unique : " When mother has made father angry, in the day-time, he
straps her to the bed, at night, and beats her." All the child's ob-
servations with regard to the details of the sexual intercourse of his
parents make him think of it as maltreatment and punishment, and
thus serve as fuel for his own sadistic tendencies. From such ex-
periences the 'boy, in particular, is likely to acquire an over-strong
self-consciousness, a desire for mastery which finds expression by
day-light under the form of fierceness and ungovernable temper,
showing themselves in games and sports.
How keen the little child's faculty of observation is in the sexual
field (Gebiet), how luxuriant his imagination is in relation to such
matters, is illustrated by the statement of a lady who remembers, as
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296 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
an experience of her later childhood, that she had always been afraid
her mother would hurt her father during the night. It is doubtless
true that the little girl's suppressed feelings of hostility toward her
parents ^>eak out in this thought ; but the origin of the fear is not
solely explained 'by that. This lady, when a child of six or seven
years, shared the sleeping-room of her father and mother, and often
saw her strong mother bending over her father who was of a delicate
constitution. Although the child was not able to understand the
significance of this position, yet frequently she played with her
younger, less robust, sister the game of " man and wife " where she
herself, being the stronger child, took pleasure in kneeling upon her
weaker sister, with the threat : " I'll squeeze you to death." In the
popular game of " father and mother " the child's imagination lives
itself out to the limit ; the chance of keeping the exhibition-impulse
busy, and of allowing the looking-impulse (Schaulust) full play,
often counts as the object and stipulation of " getting married." In
his "Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre " Freud*^ in-
troduces instructive cases illustrating the infantile group of ideas
(Vorstellungskon^lex) in regard to the sexual relations between
man and wife. These are cases which are to be taken as paradigms
for the usual course of development of the child in this realm of
thought and fancy. In the first place, the child has to seek some way
of reconciling his fairy-tale lore with his actual observations. In
no other sphere of interest does he find himself met with so many
lies and such obtrusive hypocrisy as he does here. And when to
these are added the jokes of adults who think they do not need to
take care what they say before the child, the conditions are secured
for the rapid growth of that unconscious desire which listens eagerly
to catch every slightest hint at disclosures bearing on the relations
which are kept so carefully shrouded in mystery. The sexual phe-
nomena in the life of animals confront the child very early, and —
through the connecting-link of the defecation-process, with which he
is familiar — become of such great interest to him that even when his
knowledge is still slight, an understanding of the true state of things
soon dawns upon him. For that reason, teachers and psychologists
have proposed, repeatedly, to unite sex-enlightenment witfi observa-
tions made in the animal-world (kingdom) and that of plants — but
with little prospect of result, it seems to me, as long as the stork is
still brought in to account for the origin of human beings. For sex-
enlightenment only one thing is needed, namely the substitution — ^at
^1 Freud, Uber infantile Sexualtheorien.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 297
the outset— of the right explanation for the wrong one. Why the
evasion, the story about the stork, the lake with the children, and so
forth ? As soon as the child's intelligence puts the first question as
to the origin of children, the answer should give the truth, framed
in accordance with the child^s power to take it in. How cleverly
and how delicately Frau Scupin discusses this subject with her five-
year-old little son! If every mother found the right words at the
right moment, many a child would be spared brooding on these
things, and then he would be kept from a form of thinking which
makes his parents seem impure to him and which debases man's
highest sentiments. And if, with fine tact like that of the mother
mentioned, the (model) mother were to add that the child should
keep his knowledge to himself, 'because every mother wishes to ex-
plain in person to her child how life becomes incarnate, she would
have no cause to dread the premature awakening of a sensuality
destined to lead the child to forbidden act or speech. I have heard
of a four-year-old little boy, from whom the truth had not been
withheld, who proudly revealed to another child that it grew in its
mother's body, whereupon the mother of the latter refused to let the
two children play together any longer, saying: "What a depraved
boy that is ! The stork brought my children." But in doing this,
she committed an error much worse than that of the first child. The
more natural the origin of the human being is made to seem to the
child, the less the subject will occupy his thoughts and .be manipu-
lated by his imagination. Whether one should connect information
relating to the propagation of the species with manifestations of
plant-life or of animal-life, or with the child's own observation of
women about to become mothers, is a problem which admits of no
general answer. But certainly the instruction should be given
before the child has opportunity to spy into the intimacies of his
parents; for through the influence of this premature spying, the child
is robbed of the best part of his frankness and simplicity. It is not
to be denied that it is far easier to make the birth-process compre-
hensible to the child than it is to explain to him the role of the father.
Before the question " But how does the baby get into the mother's
body?" the mother, as wife, often tomts to a halt. The mother
who without shyness has told her child how he lived a long time in
her body, and grew there until the place became too small and dark
for him, and how he freed himself from his prison and caused his
mother much pain in doing so; such a mother will hesitate to tell
more. Even the most intelligent women shrink from speaking about
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298 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the most intimate of the relations between man and wife. Much,
much time will elapse before the prejudice will have disappeared
against telling the truth about this also, at the moment when the
child's reason (Verstand) and feeling (Gemut) demand it. But if,
in instructive words, it is made clear to the child that this act is an
expression of the highest love, and is only possible to grown people,
there should be hardly more cause to fear that the childish imag-
ination will become overstimulated than it would be, perhaps, upon
hearing a description of the work of an engineer, etc. Moreover it
seems that Nature herself has drawn the boundary-lines at which,
at different ages of the child, his curiosity comes to a standstill.
My nephew, an exceedingly intelligent little fellow, who shies at no
question when it concerns something which appears to him worth
knowing, was informed very early about the origin of animals and
of human beings — a task which was made substantially easier
through the fact of his living in the country. At four years of age,
he recognized, from the growth of the teats, that an animal was
aibout to have young; and he applied that (fact) to the females of
his environment. He protects and feeds animals that are big with
young; and he is full of chivalrous attention to pr^;nant women.
But even now, when he is six and a half years old, it is a matter of
indifference to him haw this state of pregnancy comes to exist; in-
deed, he seems to believe that it comes of itself when the woman is
at a certain age, and that preparation is made therefore in early
childhood. At least, a remark of his — made after a visit from a
seven-year-old friend — ^points to this view : " Erna will have three
children, some day; I heard them fighting inside of her."
The prejudices which continue to prevent a natural, free method
of enlightenment in the handling of the sexual problem in the edu-
cation of children, form the turbid springs whence many unfortunate
things flow that are disturbing to adult life. The psychic impotence
of the husband which places serious limitations alike on his power
of work and his power of enjoyment, the anesthesia of the wife
through which both (husband and wife) are cheated of marital
satisfaction, have root quite frequently in distorted ideas on sex-
matters and in perverted sexual demands made by one or the other
party. These longings which thus keep their hold so strongly are
the ineradicable remains of infantile sex-theories. In the wcMnan,
in particular, there is retained (from her infancy) a certain sense of
guilt, the painful feeling of having taken part in something disgust-
ing and forbidden (etwas Hasslichem und Verbotenem).
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 299
A fertile field is opened, to the child's imagination, in the realm
of the fairy-tale. Scarcely one of these creations but derives its
power from those references — ^to love and hate, to kindness and
cruelty — that are of a sort to stir the emotions of even the youngest
child very deeply. The queen who longs in vain for children, and
whose wish a kind fairy finally fulfills through the gift of a piece
of fruit; the king's daughter who chooses the shepherd ior her lord
and consort; the prince who goes forth to fight dragons and other
monsters in order to show himself worthy of the love of his dear
lady ; such tales as these awaken in the child's heart the same sym-
pathetic response as is aroused by the thousand and one distresses
of the seven roes, or by the mortal fear of Little Red Riding-
hood. How closely the child follows every detail of the story, and
how ruthlessly he corrects every variation from the text and fills
in every omission. My sister, even in her third year, refused to
allow the slightest changes in the once-heard wording. Woe unto
our aurit, the indefatigable story-teller of our nursery, if she related
as follows : " And soon after that the queen had a child." — " No,
no ! " the little critic would interrupt, " not until after a year," or,
" No, you have left out * again ' ; it is her second child." If carping
criticism permits no change of text to go uncensured, yet imagina-
tion takes care that the little listeners forget their real environment,
time and place, and also that they feel with the hero of the fairy-
tale, suflFer with him the most terrible tortures of hunger and thirst,
and experience with him all the terrors of the dark forest. When
the story-hour is at an end, how often the child refuses to go into a
dark room alone, yes even into the neighboring room; for the
monsters and the ghostly figures follow him, he feels himself stiU
under the spell of the fairy-tale, and only slowly and reluctantly
can he free himself from the enchantment, from the mental cocoon
in which he has enwrapped himself. It is certain that sexual feel-
ings and emotions play an important part in all this. The analysis
of neurotic patients has shown that fear often excites libidinous
stirrings; and not a few adults who have remained in good health
can remember that while listening intently when fairy-tales were
being told, pleasurable sensations were experienced in the genital
organs — ^sensations (Organempfindungen) similar to those during
onanistic activity in the later years of youth. The pressing together
of the thighs, the stretching of the body — or pressing the arms
against it, the unnatural holding of the breath — ^are signs which are
readily to be noticed by any person who observes a child attentively
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300 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
when he is listening to fairy-talcs. Indeed, mastuitatory acts fre-
quently accompany the listening to such stories. At four years of
age, my nephew stated, with no idea of the impropriety: "Mother,
when you tell me fairy-stories at night, I press my little tip (his
'membrum') so hard between my legs (Schenkd) that it is all hot
and stiff.*' " Sitting tight" (close), as children call the act of keep-
ing still when stories are told, remains characteristic of many peo-
ple ; and young girls, in particular, are often heard to complain : " I
have been sitting still so long, reading novels, that it has made me
very stiff." Under such conditions, the flushed chedcs and shining
eyes complete the picture of sexual excitement.
Imagination enables the child to conjure up everything which he
thinks worth wishing for. Nature, especially, is transformed through
the creative power of the imagination, so as to conform to the
child's momentary feeling and wishes. Goltz writes: "What all
child-phantasies, almost without exception, have in common is the
conception of an entirely new and unknown world beyond the ap-
parent horizon." Perhaps, in this notion, is expressed the desire to
reach, at last, the final solution of life's riddle ; and this same hope
and wish may also lie at the root of the boy's pleasure in starting
out on adventures and in making journeys. Naturally, to the child,
" the entirely new and unknown world " is such a one in which even
greater love will be given him than at home, a world in which there
will be no laws (Gebot) and no prohibitions (VeAot) — ^no "must"
and " must not " — ^a world in which his own will is to be the only
thing that counts. This making of a world of one's own, a king-
dom which lies apart from everyday life and is not connected with
it, is a tendency rather distinctive of the child. To mark off a comer
of the rocOTi for himself and his playmates, to call a piece of ground
in the garden his own — ^be it never so small — is the child's desire and
delight. In this space he feels himself sole ruler; here he brings
together the secret treasures from his pocket ; here he nourishes his
sentiments of revolt ; here he hides himself when his mother's voice
calls him from play. "In childhood one feels the poetry of the
comer, of the space divided off from the common space. In this
longing for a place set apart from the space around it, a little world
in the midst of a great one, the child instinctively seeks expression
for a common need, and his hut-building has its poetic justification
no less than had the building of the ' Holy of Holies ' in the Tem-
ple of Solomon."^* I have always noticed that this seeking for a
i« Sec Goltz, p. 256.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 3OI
quiet nook is to be found especially with those children in whose
homes certain rooms — ^whether a reception-room for callers, or
father's "den" (Arbeitszimmer) — are "forbidden territory" to
young people. But the space under the table or beneath the piano-
forte is also " a place of refuge " from threatened punishment. Per-
haps this retreat reminds them of mother's lap where very little chil-
dren take refuge from every new impression. With almost all chil-
dren the preference for " hiding-places " extends to the attic and the
cellar. The view of " the entirely new and unknown world " to be
had from the one, and the fear-creating darkness of the other, attract
the child ever anew. If one considers how well adapted such private
corners are to many a forbidden pleasure, then their never-failing
fascination (Zauber) is easily explained. Possibly the deepest root
of the infantile fancy (fondness) for quiet comers is to be sought in
phantasies pertaining to the prenatal state in the uterus; the testi-
monies of neurotic patients, treated psycho-analytically, speak in
favor of this view.
Although manifestations of fear belong to the sphere of the emo-
tional life, nevertheless it appears to me not inappropriate to speak
of fear in connection with its powerful promoter, the imagination.
G)mpayre designates fear as "the characteristic emotion of the
child," and Stanley Hall in his able (geistvoll) investigation into
fear has given us a deep insight into its nature and its forms, most
of which date from early childhood. The first-named investigator
sees in fear " a vague apprehension of a possible evil " and attributes
the origin of fear to the cooperation of intelligence and imagination.
It is true that, in our more mature years, the critical power of reason
exercises a restraining influence upon the over-zealous imaginative-
faculty and greatly tempers the creative efforts of the fancy, but in
the case of children the conditions are quite different. In conse-
quence of the instability of the child's ideas, the limited scope of his
experience, and the relatively small amount of information at his
command, his intelligence works under such great difficulties, that
the imagination easily gets the upper hand in situations which are
strange or unusual. Thus arises the fear of everything new, and the
fear of the dark. Both of these are the expression of increased
need of love (necessity for it). With the child the darkness loses
much of its terror the instant he feels that he is not alone. He
gropes after a protecting hand; he wishes at least to hear the voice
of a loved person. Indeed, by singing and talking as if to someone
else, he deceives himself into thinking that he hears such a voice.
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302 JAMES J. PX7TNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
And so, if the manifestations of love are not to be (Stained outside
of himself, he turns to his personal thoughts and feelii^ as to a
place of refuge. The child approaches everything new, everything
unknown, with tacit demands for signs of love (in the broadest sense
of the word), yet at the same time with an underlying dread kst
these longings be not gratified. With respect to persons this expec-
tation of love is dbvious from the very beginning, but the same
(hope) holds good also in regard to inanimate things, for to the
child's imagination every object is alive ; and if for " love " we sub-
stitute " gain in pleasure," then the situation becomes clearer.
It happens frequently, in earliest childhood, that other fears join
themselves to these two most primitive forms (novelty and the
dark) ; and these secondary fears originate, regularly, in sex-repres-
sions. But since sexual-erotic (sexuell-erotisch) experiences are
of one or another sort according to the individual concerned, the
feeling of fear does not have the same history with all children.
It may, nevertheless, be affirmed as always true that fear makes its
home in those same secret places of the soul in which those phan-
tasies have their birth that spring from the unappeased libido and
unsatisfied curiosity, and that intensify both. The former is pro-
vided with new nourishment by this feeling of fear which also gives
(or attempts to give) to the latter the reply to those questions on sex-
matters which the children's adult guardians have declined to en-
courage.** Everything that the child hears and sees, but fails wholly
or partially to grasp, concerning the sexual relations among men
and animals, is stowed away in his mind; and in the course of the
struggle for clearness of comprehension, the phantoms of fear arise.
They grow to be of such enormous size that the young mind breaks
beneath the burden of them. If the analysis of these extreme cases
does not fall strictly within the scope of this treatise, nevertheless
the boundary-line between normal and pathological mental occur-
rences is so hard to draw, that it is difficult to speak of the fears of
a healthy child without touching upon the phobias of neurotics.
The methods employed in education need to be scrutinized afresh
with reference to this fear-problem ; for the emotion of fear often
arises as the result of a faulty training in childhood, and it may rest
with education to determine whether the tendency to fear becomes
diminished or increased. The fear of punishment, the fear of
ghostly figures of avenging Justice, etc., are often to be traced back
either to excessive severity, or to a failure on the part of teachers
^> Thus taking an unsympathetic attitude toward child-problems. Trans.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 303
to exercise due authority. The child should obey from love ; if this
is felt in his heart, then no threats of punishment will be required —
no invocation of "bugatx)Os" (Wauwau), and the like, will be
needed if the teacher inspires love. Moreover, if the relations be-
tween the child and the adults with whom he comes in contact are
of the right sort and marked by the proper mixture oi authority and
affection, the fear of animals will be less likely to arise; especially
if such adults — whom the child is sure to take as models for himself,
in points of attitude and conduct — do not behave in such a way as
to suggest habits of fear to him. Fear is frequently a source of
erotic gratification to the child and acquires, for this reason, a tone
of pleasure and a tone of distress ; and it is this doubleness of tend-
dency (ambivalence) that explains the infectiousness of fear.
V. Reasoning (Die Vernunft)
If mentally "taking in" the surrounding world, so to speak, is
the necessary preliminary to activity of the imagination, it is not to
be denied that the latter has a retroactive effect upon the formation
of the judgment, and upon the reasoning processes (Urteil und
Schluss). Imagination is like the locomotive steam-boiler which
provides ever new energy, while the intelligence is, in a certain sense,
like the constant water-supply which guards against overheating,
and at the same time the brake which prevents derailment. Thus
characterized by this reciprocal interplay of forces, with now one
tendency coming forward into prominence, now the other, the intel-
lectual and emotional life of the infant unrolls itself before our
gaze. Over against the realistic element in his make-up, which
leads the little child to grasp things as they are, to test their prac-
tical value and judge them accordingly, there stands, in striking
contrast, the idealistic, the dreaming element which urges him to
spin himself into a web of ideas which have nothing in common
with reality except certain central points (Kerne). He is inclined,
from earliest days, to investigate things over-critically, to brood over
them ; he loves, at times, to shut himself away from playmates and
to live in a dream-world which he knows how to guard with anxious
care from the gaze of strangers. But even at his early age the ex-
perience acquired under the supervision of the intelligence is ac-
cepted as controller of the imagination. Only under conditions of
morbid over-excitement does phantasy free herself from these con-
fining fetters. With the normally endowed child reason retains the
supremacy in order not to let the little builder of air-castles forget
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304 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
that the most beautiful dreams vanish before reality; in spite of
that, the youthful idealist collides with the hard things of everyday
life far more frequently than does the realist, who takes things in a
matter-of-fact way as they present themselves to him. In this nat-
ural endowment of the child lies the nucleus of the future directive
power of the mind, the tendencies that later are to determine his
choice of a vocation and his attitude toward the universe as a whole.
But this natural endowment is of importance for the sexual interests
also. Certain influences and tendencies that are significant for the
life of men and animals alike remain unnoticed by the dreamy child
much longer than by the practical child. The latter, it is true, is
satisfied comparatively easily with an explanation which seems sen-
sible to him ; but the child g^ven to meditation thinks the explana-
tion over; imagination twines its entangling tendrils around the
truth, and in the child's little head the true and the false become
confused, giving rise to a state of chaos in which it is hard for him
to get his bearings. The conflict for supremacy between reason
and imagination is clearly evident, not only as between different in-
dividuals, but also in one and the same child. Occupation, environ-
ment, the occurrences of family-life influence mental development
(die Richtung des Geisteslebens) to a remarkable extent ; and a child
who in the midst of the busy whirl of the doings at home feels prac-
tical interest in everything may appear to be a wholly different sort
of person when transferred to the quiet environment of his grand-
parents' home. The tranquility of old age, to which he is unaccus-
tomed; the many objects belonging to a period of time of which he
knows nothing, a time of which grandmother has so much to tell, so
much that is beautiful and like a fairy-story — all represent influences
that work powerfully upon the imagination of the child. All at
once, out of the realist is made a quiet dreamer who sees the house
full of the ghosts of by-gone days.
The practical proof of intelligence in the very little child comes
in his making a selection from among the objects offered him. As
in early infancy, so also in the play-period, the understanding exer-
cises a certain choice with regard to the matters brought before it.
While one child has an eye for color especially, and soon learns to
recognize by their colors the various things he sees, to distinguish
between them and to take pleasure in them, another directs his whole
attention to the form, and a third may prefer to listen to tones
and to sounds, and to found his judgment on these attributes,
whereas color and form are of little interest to him. Thus the ob-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 305
servation of the direction in which the intelligence is especially active
when the child is very young permits one to draw justifiable con-
clusions as to special qualifications and as to the probable choice
of future vocation — ^although just in this field radical changes often
show themselves during puberty. Musical endowment, for example,
manifests itself in the early, attentive catching of tones and of
rhythm, in a strong emotional reaction to music, in a preference for
musical toys. On the other hand, my nephew, who, even now in his
seventh year, cares nothing for hearing his mother play the piano,
showed the same tendency in his second year, and showed it by re-
fusing warbling-bird toys ; and a chime of small bells interested him
only when another person had appropriated it — envy serving as the
only motive for his occasional pleasure in sound. The boy's mother,
however, took intense delight in ^ music. With both — ^mother and
son alike — ^the influence of a close personal relationship to the mother
has played an important role in determining this liking and disliking
of music. When the boy, who is extremely lively, is obliged to
occupy himself alone and to preserve silence, while his mother is
playing the pianoforte, he feels curtailed of maternal affection.
Once, in his sixth year, he suddenly began to weep softly to himself,
and being asked the reason, he explained, between sobs : " I cannot
bear it when mother plays the piano. The stupid piano-playing!"
The child's mother herself, on the contrary, thought of her own
mother's piano-playing as a manifestation of affection toward her,
and often begged for it at the twilight hour. The paths which even
the child's intelligence follows in its development are traced for it
by its native endowment and also by influences related to the emo-
tional life (Gemutsleben), as anyone can see who observes school-
children. A clever mother knows how to take advantage of these
strong emotional tendencies in the mental life (Geistesleben) of the
child by appealing to his affection for her, as a means of keeping him
straight when admonition proves of no avail. Rarely does the
mother's call, " Do it for love of me," fail to win response. The
development of the intellectual powers depends in so great measure
upon that of feeling that the latter forms the sine qua non for the
former, in earliest childhood. I think with pity of all those many
children to whom the wonders of the world around them remain
closed because of the lack of tender ministration on the part of
adults ; as in immediate connection with this deprivation such children
frequently show a retardation in speech-development, a backward-
ness independent of organic causes. In short, the more generous
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306 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
the love which is lavished upon a child during his first year, the
more satisfactorily does he develop, not only as regards his tem-
perament but also in his intellectual life (Verstandesleben).
It is of special psychological interest to watch the child's con-
ceptions of space and of time in process of formation ; both of them
become developed in closest conjunction with the emotional life
(Gefiihlsleben). It is through the discipline of pain that the child
learns to distinguish his body from the world outside ; and discovers,
through all the opportunities offered him, that there are limits which
he cannot pass without the danger of disaster, physical and mental.
When a child's parents forbid him to pass certain boundaries, or
when he finds himself physically unable to reach this or that distant
object, he gains an experience which g^ves him new ideas of limita-
tion and distance, while the gradual perfection of his visual powers
makes him aware of the infinite extension of space. The pleasur-
able muscular activity which expresses itself through catching and
climbing leads the child to distinguish between up and down and
between high and low. These conceptions, to which the childish
intellect thus gives as real a value as its capacity permits, become
fixed through a growing familiarity with numbers, even when these
are used with great looseness. " The sky is 100,000 cm. — ^no, it is
1,000,000 kilograms high ; the ocean is 20 m. deep," are statements
characteristic of a four-year-old. As soon as the child has formed
an idea of space, he begins to measure things with a centimeter-
stick, to weigh them on scales, and to find their value in money.
In doing that, of course those objects come first in order which stand
nearest to the child's interest. "How long is the apple-fritter
(Apfelstrudel) when it is unrolled?" "If one could measure
Driicki (feces), how long would it be?" — or the same question in
the form of repression, " Tell me truly, — ^how long are the intestines
(Darm) ? " With boys, as we have already heard, there comes also
the question as to the length of the genital member in the case of
animals and of men. The habit of measuring things in play is
more pronounced upon the whole, with boys than with girls, in
early youth ; and it is natural and probable that its deepest and most
strongly repressed and secret root lies in the interest in their own
sex-organs from the size-standpoint, and in the comparison of them
with those of other boys. Pleasure in such occupation explains, too,
why boys — ^as a rule — ^acquire a real familiarity with numbers and
figures earlier than do girls, who, in spite of great general intelli-
gence, frequently show a considerable lack of understanding of these
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 307
IB ^ matters during the first school period. At the end of his sixth year»
Scupin's little son already did sums in addition and in subtraction by
*s ^ himself ; and my six-year-old nephew multiplies and divides without
effort with numbers up to twenty, although the simplest tasks in
arithmetic drew bitter tears from his mother even at the end of her
seventh year, while at five and a half years she could read fluently.
Boys show a pronounced preference for massive and, in particular,
for longish objects. Canes count directly as symbols of manhood,
and the same motive is also to be considered as constituting the at-
traction of other objects of relatively elongated form.^ Thus boys
love to build towers and carry them to dizzy heights, to make their
tunnels and their railroad trains as long as possible ; and, in short,
the larger and the longer the self-made pla)rthing is, the prouder is
the little boy. The Scupins note in regard to their child in the ninth
month of his sixth year, as follows :• "The same statement holds
true of his use of modeling-wax that we made of drawing — ' Every-
thing on which special value is placed, and of which he is right
proud, grows to an unusual size under his hands.* " Another con-
nection between sexual feelings and processes and the interests of
childhood, analogous to that which has to do with the length and
size of objects, is perhaps to be detected in the fondness for throw-
ing and shooting objects — ^a tendency which according to Darwin
is innate in the boy. Darwin's view contains much that is of in-
terest, especially when one conceives of this inborn tendency to
throw objects as indicative of an unconscious activity of the sex-
instinct (Geschlechtstrieb), in general, and of one of its components,
the so-called sadism, in particular. As a matter of fact, the aggres-
siveness of the boy, his constant readiness to wrestle with someone,
to put other people down (subjection) — these things are but prep-
arations for his future conduct (Verhalten) during the marriage-act
(Geschlechtsakt). In the same way, the act of casting something
at an object, aiming at something, could be considered as a symbol
of erection, which may occur even at a youthful age, and is taken
cognizance of in dreams, where long, pointed objects stand for the
virile member. In harmony with the inborn pleasure in throwing
things stands the boy's propensity to fill up every hollow, the wish to
put the finger into every opening. When out for walks in the
country, the boy " O " — twenty-one months old — passed by no hole
^This statement might seem meaningless to many persons, but not to
those who know the history of phallic symbolism, in its ancient and its mod-
cm form. (Trans.)
* Scupin, L c, p. 207.
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308 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
in garden fences, no pipe from a spring of water, without introduc-
ing his mother's right fore-finger into the same, as she told me, un-
conscious of the concealed significance of this expression. The
same boy when between two and three years of age gave his mother
"tongue-kisses" and once, in making love to her, he declared:
" Mutti, I would like to stick my Wiwimacher (membrum) into your
mouth." So it seems that the impulse to fill up holes is also atavis-
tically inherent in the boy. To this impulse, indeed, is to be ascribed
the boyish inclination to make caves and to hide treasures in them.
As a rule, this form of play is less frequently indulged in by girls ;
and when it is taken up, it is probably to be r^farded simply as an
indication of anal-and-urethral erotism or of early masturbation.
Also the child-practice of boring into the nose is both a transference
(Verschiebung) of a forbidden form of self-gratification to a
"harmless" zone, and with boys is the realization of the wish to
penetrate an opening as deeply as possible.
For all children, boys as well as girls, at a certain age, very
small objects have a special interest. Tiny dolls, carriages, orna-
ments, and wearing articles excite the child's fond admiration ; and
as a rule the smallest animals are to him the object of the most
devoted attention and affection. Perhaps this fondness flows from
an auto-erotic source ; for it is noticeable how the child, in playing
with diminutive things, strikes exactly that note of tenderness and
of intimacy with which his mother pets and cares for him. On the
same principle, if he possesses or sees several objects of the
same kind but different in size, he does not hesitate to call them
mother and child — or to designate himself as "parent" and the
little bird before him as " child." Little Scupin,* in his fourth year,
showed his preference for the smaller animals just as clearly as did
my nephew, who fell into a state of great delight when a lady-bird
alighted on his arm. Since children frequently, at this period of
life, have not yet learned to feel disgust, their aflFection for small
objects extends to caterpillars, beetles, and worms. As a child of
six years, I let toads jump on my hand ; and with joyful excitement,
I watched their comical hopping about. On the part of all children,
the selective preference which falls upon round objects, especially
those spherical in form, can be easily explained from the widespread
infantile coprophilism ; indeed, there are not a few children who
by keeping back (restraining) the "stools" provide themselves
with a veritable pastime in the final production of such forms as
■ Scupin, 1. c, II, p. 112.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 309
they please (beliebiger Formen). At four years of age, the little
boy, " O," boasted that he could " make " whatever he wished.*
From gradually grasping the idea of space the infantile intelli-
gence is led on to the consideration of the important question,
"Where do things come from and whither do they go?" — ^which
question, in the last analysis, always aims at the origin of human
beings, and also impels to meditation on the end of life, to thoughts
on " dying " and on " death," and in connection with that to ponder-
ing on religious questions. To the small child the disappearance of
things is a mystery which finds a solution if it is a matter within the
direct range of the senses, but remains inexplicable as soon as the
space in which the events took place extends beyond the boundaries
of infantile familiarity. Sully* relates of a little child how at sight
of the ebbing sea he pondered in vain on the question, "To what
place is the sea swimming off?" At four and a half years of age,
my nephew queried thus : " If no more men were to die, where would
the people live ? How many people would have to live in one room?
in one apartment? in one house? Do people die so that those that
remain may have more room ? " And when, at six years of age, he
saw the water-gates (Regulierungsbauten) on the Wien, the old
thought emerged again within him, "If one could draw off all the
rivers and seas, so that they would flow under the ground, then no
one else would need to die ; then there would be room for every-
body." Not to speak here of the fact that at bottom these specula-
tions are displacements of questions which rest on sexual curiosity
(Verschiebungsfragen), his strong anal-and-urethral erotism tends
constantly to break out in these reflections and causes him to discuss
in detail all the eventualities having relation to that interest. It is
from motives such as this that the childish attention becomes so
fixed upon moving water, and, in general, upon everything that moves.
To the child the flowing of water is an eternal mystery, something
forever involved in obscurity. To fathom "the whence" and to
discover " the whither " remains an endless delight to him — whether
the special problem be to find this out about a spring (which, indeed,
he does not regard as a real " source," i. e., as not itself caused) or
to peer into the depths of a water-conductor. When we consider
^ The idea that just as food goes into the body " dead " yet becomes there
the source of life, so the "dead/' clay-like products of digestion are set
apart to stand again, eventually, in important relations to life (as is literally
true) has played a very significant part in ancient mythology and the mythol-
ogy of childhood. (Trans.)
» Sully, 1. c, p. 70.
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310 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
that myth and dream designate the earth as " mother/' then we recog-
nize very soon that in constantly seeking the source of water there
lives the unconscious wish of the boy to see how the woman, the
mother, performs the necessary duties in attending to her bodily
needs ; or the subconscious wish of the little girl comes into play to
discover how the man, her father, does the same. From that desire
comes the demand of boys to be taken by the mother into the toilet-
room with her, and also the habit of listening outside the door.
As " the whence " and " the whither " of flowing water is a mystery
to the child, so too the quantity of the water seems to be a strange
thing. At five years of age, little Scupin* wondered how it hap-
pened that after he had just spit, yet as much saliva was there again
immediately. Spitting is a game which never loses its fascination
for children. To spit much and far, " just as a man does," is the
ambition of all lads, and naturally is to be regarded as unconscious
substitution for a sexual act.
In the early-appearing delight of the child over things in motion
there lies also, undoubtedly, a bit of muscle-erotism as well as of
sadism. The former expresses itself in unconscious imitation of the
movement seen; the latter (sadism) in the instinctive desire to pre-
vent it — ^into which will and purpose enter. From sadism comes
also the seeming infantile cruelty towards flies on the window-pane,
towards beetles, butterflies, etc. The fondness of children for the
moon — ^a fondness quite common — has its origin, in great part, from
the pleasure-accented perception of its relatively fast movement.
To fathom the depths of space, especially of enclosed space, to
find an answer to the question, "How does this look inside?" (a
form of curiosity which, with intelligent children above all others,
gives rise to a passion for destroying things) is connected perhaps
with memory-traces of the intra-uterine state. The diflFerent sex-
theories with the aid of which the child is determined to solve the
problem of our coming into existence, the mystery of " the becom-
ing" (des Werdens), assist in attributing to the interiors of enclosed
spaces as such, a very special significance. Any hidden mechanism
of a toy — designed for regulating the motion of a motor, the opening
and shutting of a doll's eyes, the crying and talking of the doll —
with its apparent power of awakening movement and life, is instinc-
tively looked on as furnishing an analogy to the power which ac-
counts for the origination of the human being within the mother's
body. It may perhaps be urged that the infantile curiosity to inves-
^ Scupin, 1. c, II, p. 206.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 3II
tigate the interior of things has in it nothing of the sexual, for
curiosity may be directed also to entirely unoffending objects. But
once in a while the very remarks of the child show most clearly the
real mental process. A five-year-old little girl of whom I know,
who has been told of the development of the child in the uterus,
and also about the young of animals, holds dolly up to her ear in
order to hear whether a baby is in its body. And my nephew, at
four years of age, had a toy " Dackel " and was determined to find
out whether perhaps two young Dackel were not sewed in there.
And another four-year-old boy also, who, it is true, knew that the
mother animal "carries" its young — ^but a boy from whom the
analogous processes in the human being had been anxiously kept
concealed — put a small locomotive inside a large one with the words,
" There ! the old engine is going to have a child, and so must not go
so fast." Thus, as soon as certain observations have been made by
the child, in connection with men and animals, the idea of space
becomes a most important factor in his speculations. But the
thoughts so aroused acquire new meaning through becoming asso-
ciated with another process — ^that of digestion. For just because the
process of digestion is remote from the child^s direct observation, it
becomes a source of interest. " Mamma, can one never get a chance
to see how food and water roll around in the stomach?" And a
five-year-old boy whose uncle had undergone an operation for ap-
pendicitis, asked him, after his recovery, "Uncle, did you see the
Baba (feces) in your stomach?"
From the conception of space the infantile perceptive- faculty
proceeds slowly, over the bridge of " number," to the conception of
time. For a long while "time" remains obscure to the infantile
mind, being something to which he adjusts himself with difficulty.
At the beginning of his third year, Scupin's little son^ used " to-day "
for the words " immediately," " at once." At the end of the same
year he used " yesterday " for " a short time ago " (just now) . Not
until his fifth year* did he distinguish between morning, noon, and
evening with any degree of clearness. But still the evident depend-
ence of the conception of time upon concrete impressions — such as
the daily meals — is noticeable. In the alternation — emotionally toned
— of sleep and the waking-life, in the regular return of the hours
for meals, we must recognize important factors for the formation
of the idea of time. With little Scupin,' too, the spatial conception
^ Scupin, L c, pp. 113 u. 156.
® Scupin, 1. c, p. 107.
• Scupin, 1. c, II, p. 157.
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312 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
of time IS found. In his sixth year, he asks, " Is an hour so long?"
' — ^holding his hands apart perhaps half a meter. Making time con-
crete occurs, on the one side, from watching the hands of the clock
moving on the dial-plate; and on the other side, from the fact of
the growth of the child's body with increasing years. Sully men-
tions a four-year-old little girl who asked, "Where has yesterday
gone ? " and " Where docs to-morrow come from ? " ; also a five-year-
old boy who wanted to know, "Where does past time go to?" and
"Why are other days always coming?" My nephew thought he
saw in the Ferris-wheel in the Prater an image of time. The child's
effort to conform time to something occupying space leads to the
most charming personifications. " Does the clock feel how time is
pushing her ? " " Where is time sitting in the clock ? " Little " O,"
at five years, queried untiringly, " If the clock stands still, docs time
stand still too?" Ans.: "No, if the clock stands still at twelve,
noon, and if no one sets the clock until evening, but the clock-hands
still stand at twelve, in the meantime it has grown quite dark."
" Yes, for other people; but for that clock it is (surely) only twelve
o'clock." " Why cannot time be weighed? " asked the four-year-old
son of a grocer; and just before Christmas my nephew bemoaned
the fact that he could not " eat time, so that it would become less
faster." Such expressions as the following show a strong natural-
istic conception : " Is the sun time ? " and " I have seen time when I
have been blinking at the sun. The long rays are time." Not only
dream-symbolism but also poetry teaches us to bring the intensive in-
fantile interest in time and in the clock into relation with the prob-
lem of life and death ; thus W. Stekel quotes^** a humorous passage
from L. Finkh's autobiographical work, "Rapunzel," a passage in
which the clock is used as the symbol of life. The apprehension
of relatively long periods of time gives special difficulty. The in-
fantile explanation, " a day is when papa comes home at night and
plays ' tag ' with me " conceals, as the reason for such a division of
time, the longing for the father (who is absent all day) and springs
from the child's longing for affection, just as does the explanation,
" a year is when the Christ-child comes again," or as the custom of
counting the days before the Christmas festival — " after so and so
many times waking in the morning, Christmas will be here." We
see how, in this instance also, the emotional side of the child's life
assists in inducing clearness about even the ideas of the most com-
^0 Stekel, Die Uhr als Symbol des Lebens, Zentratblatt f. Psychoanalyse,
11,5.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 313
plex sorts. The great lack of certainty in conceiving of the greater
divisions of time is shown particularly in the child's views on age.
Years which go beyond the period of childhood appear to him ex-
cessive ; but in spite of that, he does not hesitate to lay such a burden
of years to the charge of relatively young people ; and this happens
usually — ^that is the important point — ^when the persons concerned
are not especial child-lovers. In like sense is also to be interpreted
the persistence with which my nephew has refused to admit that
mamma and auntie have grown older in the past four years, although
he has celebrated their birthdays with great delight each year and
has recognized with pride his own increase in age. For the beloved
persons of his environment, time, in his calendar, stands still ; yet,
on the other hand, he likes to compute how old they will be (meas-
uring from four years ago) when he himself gets to be twenty or
thirty years old. To make this sort of reckoning is a labor of the
intelligence alone; it is a kind of computation into which feeling
does not enter. In the other case it was probably his unconscious
thoughts that prevented him from letting those persons who stand
near him grow any older; since he thinks that people die exactly
according to the number of their years. At least, the following ex-
pression seems to imply that, — " Good ! Auntie H is two years
younger than mother ; then she will die two years later, and then I
shall have her two years longer."
To the child " time " appears as the sovereign remedy for bodily
defects and diseases. This conception is probably an imitatively ac-
quired one in most cases. In the winter of his fourth year of life,
when my nephew, during a railroad journey, sat opposite a man
with a large bald spot, suddenly the child said to his mother,
"Mutti, the gentleman's hair will grow out again in the summer,
won't it?"
The power — ^always gradually acquired — ^to understand what is
meant by the passing of time, is based on the memory of experiences
marked by feeling (an gefiihlsbetonte Erlebnisse). And since it
corresponds more with the joyous spirit of the child for him to re-
member what has brought him pleasure, it is natural that especially
happy occurrences should become milestones in the reckoning of
time, while painful impressions leave their traces, for the most part,
only in the unconscious, and form the cast of mind characteristic of
later years. One might urge, to be sure, as against this view, that
the illnesses of early childhood must form a part of the permanent
deposit in the treasury of memory, that frequently time is divided
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314 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
into the period before the illness and the period after it; and that to
the child illness does not mean a pleasant experience. But when one
takes into consideration that the parents' greatest love and care fall to
the lot of the sick child, and that in his suffering he feels himself
the very center of interest of the family, then it must be admitted
that for the child sickness covers much that is delightful, many
agreeable experiences that he remembers throughout life.
Through the power of memory and that of imagination (which
has the power of peering into the future) there are developed
slowly the conceptions of " past " and " future " with their connect-
ing-link " the present." In the life of every child there arrives the
moment when his mind begins to occupy itself with the problem of
eternity. Mental labors of this sort are usually reserved for later
childhood, it is true, and yet such metaphysical questions often rise
into consciousness, even in the play-period. When my nephew, at
five years, once declared that he would keep a particularly precious
toy forever, of his own accord he asked the question, "What is
'forever,' really? How long does it last?" And he cut short his
philosophical speculations with the explanation : " Yes, yes 1 1 know.
'Forever' doesn't mean forever, truly. When Aunt Minna wants
me to stop hammering, she says, ' Stop your everlasting (ewig)
hammering!' But when my papa does not come back any more,
that is 'forever' (ewig)." Thus the boy's reasoning-power makes
a fine distinction between that which only lasts too long and that
which lasts without end. The question of a six-year-old little girl
bears witness to a like understanding of the matter. She heard her
mother complaining that the servant was "an eternal length of
time " coming home from her marketing, and asked, " Mother, isn't
Anna coming back any more, or do you mean that only in fun ? "
With increasing intelligence there awakens in the child a comprehen-
sion of the unreality (non-substantiality) of time; but it often takes
years before this recognition becomes so firmly fixed that it is not
disturbed, again and again, by the wish to " see " time.
In close relation with the development of the ideas of space and *
of time, stands that of growth, which again through its connection
with birth and death (dem Werden und Vergehen, origin and dis-
appearance) is usually of the greatest interest to the child. To
watch plants germinate, to see their growth, is an ardent wish of
many children and naturally springs from that desire to see the
human being come into existence and grow. The great fondness
for those plants which open their calyxes in the evening is a mask-
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 315
ing of the infantile longing to watch the mystery of ** the becoming."
The fulfihnent of this desire gives thrills of delight, all of which
is reflected in the child's bodily functions ; his way of moving from
one foot to the other, his flushed cheeks, his excited whispering as
if a loud word might cause Nature's beautiful game to cease, show
clearly that the child takes a subconscious pleasure in such processes
as symbolizing the creative act of birth. And so, too, does the mys-
terious existence and spontaneous unfolding of a maturing butterfly-
pupa seem to him as a manifest birth act, and as such a legitimate
object of his eager interest. The miracle of growth is one that for-
ever maintains its charm for the childish mind ; indeed, imagination
makes growth take place in lifeless things; imagination magnifies
growth where it is scarcely perceptible; and the child's impatience
turns up the soil after cotyledons even before they have had time to
develop from the seed. This strong joy of the senses, this pleasure
in the growth of plants, is expressed in the child's demand to have a
garden of his own, a flower-bed, or even a single flower-pot to which
a seed can be entrusted. I remember, from the early days of my
childhood, how the discovery took my breath away that my seed-
lings had loosened the little clods of earth and at last had sent up
delicate shoots toward the daylight ; and even into adult years I re-
mained captured by the fancy of seeing plants as human beings.
To such children the idea that the body of the woman opens itself
gradually, from the navel as a center, like the earth clods, in order
that the baby may see the light of day, offers a plausible explanation
of the birth-process.
Just as the beginning and the origin of all life is an inexhaust3)le
source of pleasure to the child's mind, as well as to his imagination,
he occupies himself no less with life's end, or exit — ^with dying and
death. To him "dying" means nothing else than a temporary
standstill of the life- functions, in particular of movement; indeed,
he transfers "dying" to objects in themselves lifeless, but which he
is not accustomed to see at rest. " The brook is dead " declared
my nephew, when he saw, for the first time, a sheet of ice on the
water. This conception, so childlike, receives strong support from
the various games, played by adults with children, which involve
the idea of the former being " shot dead." In regard to this point
Scupin's diary contains the following fine description taken from
E. Wolfgang's thirty-third month : " With the words, ' Mamma is
dead' his mother threw herself on the floor. This filled the boy
with pleasure, and he crept up to her to inspect her ; but when she
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3l6 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
did not move he grew uncomfortable and began to pull her and to
call to her imploringly, ' Do get up, Mamma ! Ill help you to get
up; Vl\ help you. You arc not dead. Why don't you get up?'"
My nephew, too, who, between his third year and his fifth, loved to
"shoot dead" the people near him, could not endure their lying
motionless for more than a brief time, and greeted the least blinking
of the eyelids with the joyful cry, " You are not dead. You winked."
This expression of joy when the "make believe" dead person
awakes is the reverse-side of the imptdses of hostility from which
no child is free and which are to be regarded as the very root of
the infantile thoughts about death and dying. The manifold little
renunciations that are required of him, the rejections of some of his
untimely demonstrations of affection, the apparent or real prefer-
ence shown for one of the other children of the family — ^all these
provocations are sufficient to mingle feelings of momentary hatred
with his love for father and mother, brothers and sisters, and for
other members of the household. These hostile feelings make the
removal of the disturber of his peace an event very, very much to
be desired. And so there arises a second conception of death. This
conception springs from the child's wish not to be hampered in car-
rying out all kinds of forbidden performances, and, as a means to
that end, to wish out of the way (absent) the persons who might
hamper him; and the same wish extends often to those whom he
looks on as standing in his light or infringing his rights in respect
to the affection of beloved people. In a short article in whidi I
tried to throw light upon the attitude of the child with regard to the
fact of death—" The Child and his Idea of Death" (Imago, I, Heft
3) — I cited a number of observations which brilliantly confirm
Freud's opinion that to the child "being dead" means no more
than a removal in the above sense.^^
Mixed in with the infantile ideas in regard to death, one finds
the germs (Keime) of compassion and of cruelty. Perhaps the
latter springs in part also from a strong muscle-erotism. It is not
alone active deeds of cruelty that speak in favor of this view, but
also the behavior of many children upon beholding scenes of cruelty
in which they take no active part. It is surely something more than
simple imitation that induces a child, when he sees a worm writhing
under the foot of another person, to cry out, " Let me do it ! Let me
^^ That is, removal from the position of even seeming to sit in judgment
on thoughts and acts that the child himself feels to be open to adverse criti-
cism, yet longs to carry on. (Trans.)
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 317
do it!" and then himself to stamp upon the worm with obvious
pleasure. It is something more than imitation that makes the child
who has been spectator of a fight that has gone beyond the bounds
of play, unconsciously to ball his own fists and strike the nearest
object or perhaps his own body, especially when someone whom he
does not like is taking part in the fray. And what else can it be
but muscle-erotism that inspires the shouts of encouragement on the
part of boys who witness a fray in which they have no personal
concern? The mingling of cruelty and compassion in the child's
soul was expressed clearly in the remark of little Scupin about a
muck-beetle which he had trodden half to death, that he had " made
it a little dead." The child feels himself, at one and the same time,
lord over life and death. In his hand it lies to do away with the
state of death-stillness, to waken some apparently lifeless creature
out of its sleep; and he feels truly distressed and saddened when
he does not succeed in this. It is difficult for us to judge when
the right understanding of the tragedy of death awakens in the child ;
but it would certainly mean an undervaluing of the tendency on the
part of the child to turn from one interest to another, if we assumed
that the sadness, the strange stillness which funerals cause in a fam-
ily aflFect him permanently. Just in consequence of this relative in-
stabiltiy of mind, the young child will momentarily succumb to the
eflFect of the mournful rites ; but the way in which these — for him —
novel experiences are made use of in play gives proof that the real,
profound solemnity of death is still incomprehensible to the child.
Thus the tears shed over a dead pet from the animal world dry up
as soon as the preparations for the burial are made. From two
peasant boys their mother finally had to take away a dead squirrel
because they had buried it five times in one forenoon. In his story
entitled " Von Kindem und Katzen, und wie sie den Nine begruben,"
Th. Storm describes similar scenes from child-life. And Otto Ernst
does the same in his delicate, humorous notes from " Appelschnuts
Leben.^' The natural light-heartedness of the child can indeed be
smothered by an unexpected, sad impression ; but soon — fed by his
inexhaustible, sunny reservoir of cheerfulness — the glad rays break
forth again from the child's eyes to brighten everything gloomy and
terrible. Certainly death is a mystery to the child, but his " uncon-
scious " knows how to keep at a distance from itself the true mel-
ancholy solution of the problem. The little child whose mother has
died asks after her ten times a day and wishes to carry his cares to
her as formerly; sorely disappointed, he turns back to his play to
forget in the very next moment how forsaken he is.
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3l8 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
For the little philosopher it is only a step from thoughts about
death to the metaphysical questions, "What happens after death?"
** Where do people go? " ** Is there a heaven for animals ? " "Do
people become angels, and then do these come down to earth again
as little babies?" A four-year-old little girl was of the opinion
that this is so. " For," she maintained, " there cannot be room in
heaven for so many angels." The old and commonplace witticism
that asks how the fallen warriors will recognize their own shot-off
limbs at the resurrection-day, occupies the child's mind in all serious-
ness; and not seldom the first doubts concerning the words of the
Holy Scriptures originate from this dilemma. In addition, there
comes the gradual perception of what is untrue in the many decep-
tive bits of information and in the evasive statements of persons high
in authority. The declaration of a little boy whose mother sum-
moned him to evening-prayer ran as follows, "Ah, mamma! The
stork story is not true, the Christ-child story is not true either, so
the story about ' the dear God ' must be nothing, too.'** This is a fine
illustration of how the child's faith gets shaky if a single pillar of the
structure breaks down. The act of meditating upon the absolute
beginning of all things culminates in the question, " Who made the
dear God?" Sully writes;** "To the child's metaphysical impulse to
follow the chain of events backward into the infinite, the ever-
present God stands very much in the way. The child wishes to get
behind this ' was always ' of the existence of God, just exactly as,
in an earlier stage of development, he wanted to get behind the
boundaries of the blue mountains. This idea is made clear through
the inferential reasoning of a child observed by Egger. After the
child had heard from his mother that before the world was, only
God the Creator was there, came the question, 'And before God?'
The answer, * Nothing,' the child explained at once by saying: * No,
the place where God is (namely, the vacant space, the void) must
have been there.' " From the natural progress of the child's intel-
lectual development there results the desire to make abstract ideas
concrete; for that reason, in all places and times, the question of
the little realist is repeated, "Why can one not see the dear God?"
To see God in all His glory — ^this is the constant longing of the
child-mind (Kinderseele) with its idealistic endowment and trend.
** " Was Kinder sagen und f ragen," von ciner Grossmamma gesammelt—
Verlag Piper, Munchen.
*• Sully, L c., p. no.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 319
It was out of such agitating desires as these, felt in his own child-
hood, that Hebbel's genius created the poem, " Bubensonntag."^*
The myths of primitive peoples show that praying to God sig-
nifies, at bottom, the recognition of fatherly authority; and, as a
matter of fact, the imagination of children lends to the mental image
of God the features of the child's own father. The words " incom-
prehensible peculiarity " explain but poorly how it happens that an
extremely wide-awake five-year-old boy — who at three years of age
had lost his father — should play with wildest joy during the day,
but at night oflFer endless prayers to God " with Whom his dear
papa lives, and Who knows everything." Here the boy's own
father occupies the place next to the Heavenly Father ; and it is not
to be wondered at that this boy, as an officer's son, should ascribe to
God the highest military honors.^* Religious doubts grow deeper
when the child becomes aware of differences of opinion at home.
Indeed, he is keen to detect the existence of such differences — ^when
they exist — without their being expressed in words. In the pres-
ence of this conflict of minds his decision naturally falls in favor of
the more strongly loved parent. And because the boy cleaves to his
mother, as a rule, the girl to her father, and the former (parent)
frequently inclines more fervently to the dogmas and customs of the
Church than the latter does, therefore one finds not seldom that boys
enter a religious path in early youth and that their minds take a di-
rection obviously inconsistent with their unruly nature. This re-
ligious turn of mind puts its special impress upon games; and at
this period boys like "playing church" and "saying mass" — ^in
doing which, following the impulse of the man to rule the woman,
such boys demand evidences of deep " devotion " from the female
attendants at church services. The play of little girls, on the other
hand, is more apt to represent festive processions where there are
bright flowing garments and wreaths of beautiful flowers; and
funeral rites also excite the fancy.
Just as the person of God becomes an object of speculation, and
very soon the center of doubt, so — ^before long — ^His attributes also
are questioned about by the intelligent child. In the transference
1* Hebbel, Samtliche Werke, Bd. 5.
i» Otto Ernst, Asmus Sempers Jugendland, I Kap. : " For his father was
exactly like the dear God, whom he had seen in a picture — the isame broad
forehead with a magnificent thick growth of gray hair about it, the same
strong nose, the same full beard which let the entire mouth be seen, that
mouth from which had come almost everything good and beautiful which
Asmus had experienced as yet."
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320 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
from the father " who knows everything and can do everything " it
seems natural to the child, as a general thing, to take for granted
equal excellencies in the case of God. It points to an early disap-
pointment in the expectations set upon the father when a little boy
who, at three or three and a half years of age, is to be brought to
the important immediate duty of saying his prayers,** resists these
efforts with the frank declaration, "But I do not want to know
about the dear God." I do not believe that Goltz's view of this
(incident) gives an adequate motivation for it. He says: "The
poor little learner might not have been made better by all those
arguments, by all that dialectical confusion ; and since he had suffi-
cient intuition to perceive how unprofitable (mentally) the high
tower of logic was from the very foundation," therefore he refused
to meet the religious requirement so contrary to his desires, and he
did so in true child fashion. The child has such a deep interest in
everything supernatural and mystic that only very strong impres-
sions, of an intimate nature, are able to evoke such a violent re-
fusal as the above. The human being believes in " the wonderful,"
" the mystical " as long as he wishes to believe in it. This is true in
childhood as well as in adulthood. The belief in the existence of
God meets with far less resistance than does that of His omnipres-
ence. That is the attribute which is the most disconcerting thing to
the child-mind about the idea of God. The question of a six-year-
old little girl, "When is the dear God going to die?" contains per-
haps in a nut-shell the wish to escape His omnipresent, all-seeing
eye. This thought, to which the child gave herself in almost morbid
brooding, matured within her the belief that whenever there was
absolute quiet in Nature, especially when oppressive stillness reigned
before a thunder-storm, then this disconcerting experience of feeling
oneself under the watchful eye of God took place — then God was
regarding her. Perhaps this association of ideas is the origin of
the excessive fear which the child showed, in later years, during very
severe thunder-storms. It is significant that the fear appeared most
strongly whenever her father was absent from home. The fear was
fed by the thought that he might be struck by lightning. Her first
severe anxiety-attack occurred at the beginning of the child's seventh
year on a day when she was afraid of being punished and when her
father took home in a carriage a child who had been making her a
visit ; and he made the ride while a heavy thunder-shower was going
on. We know from psychoanalytic investigation that excessive fear
i« Goltz, L c, p. 266.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 321
springs from the repression of a forbidden wish — ^that is to say, in
this particular instance, from the wish that an accident might happen
to the father so that the child would go unpunished. To this I
must add the fact that a constant watch was kept over the children
of this family and was felt by them as almost unbearable. Indeed,
that very same little girl tried to withdraw from this constant over-
sight by retiring to the most remote comers of the house and garden ;
therefore her objection to Divine omnipresence seems entirely nat-
ural. If, as a rule, doubt in the goodness and righteousness of God
is reserved for the mind (Vcrstand) of the larger (older) child to
struggle with, yet the little one too — ^thanks to the strength of his
healthy egoism — does not fail to recognize how often the taking of
vengeance, which seems to him the only right course of action, is
not included in the measures (of discipline) approved and exercised
by God. To the pious child, it seems incomprehensible how God's
justice can permit so much evil to happen on the earth and go un-
punished. "Why did the dear God let the houses of those poor
people bum down?" asks a five-year-old little girl when she is taken
by her father to the place where a village is in ashes. When she
sees the many distressed people, she inquires, — " Will He not at least
send them something to eat and to wear ? " And the reply of an old
peasant, — ^"My dear child, the dear God is (exists) for the rich;
He does not trouble himself about us " — that reply robs the little girl
of a part of her blessed child-faith.
Earlier yet in his life, before the child doubts the existence of
God, belief in angels and their office as guardians begins to totter.
" Where was my guardian-angel then ? " said a six-year-old little boy
falteringly when he was bome home from the skating-rink with a
broken leg. And the truly infantile idea of the "home authority"
of the dear Lord God over His family in heaven was shown in the
question, " Will the dear God punish my guardian angel because he
did not watch better over me?" During the long period of lying
still for weeks, this idea soon experienced a change. One evening
the boy announced : " Mamma, I'm not going to pray any more. I
don't believe there are any guardian-angels." And then he added
immediately : " Or is it true, after all? " The child does not wish to
say good-bye to his beautiful phantasies. Only reluctantly will he
part with the tranquillizing thought that his life is protected and
watched over by an angel from heaven ; for in giving up that idea
he gives up the thought of protecting care and his own feeling of
safety ; and to the " emotional soul " of the child, protection signifies
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322 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
love. So in forsaking his dear belief in the existence of angels or
of God, a profound disappointment underlies it all. Perhaps that
is the first disappointment in the child's life. All the little bitter-
nesses which training and (social) custom spare no child are brought
together at the same time and also find expression in that disap-
pointment. They form a little pile of distresses, so to speak. Ill-
pleased, his soul turns away from the invisible Supreme Being, which
a diild can dispense with in early childhood days much easier than
he can with the earthly " ministering angels " in his home.
(To be continued)
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ABSTRACTS
IMAGO
Zeitschrift fiir Anwendung der Psjrchoanalyse auf die Geistes-
wissenschaften
Abstracted by Louise Brink, A.B.
NEW YORK, N. Y.
(Vol. II, No. 4)
1. Some Similarities in the Mental Life of Primitive and Neurotic
People — IV. The Infantile Return of Totemism. Sigm. Freud.
2. Nakedness in Saga and Poetry — II. Otto Rank.
I, The Infantile Return of Totemism. — Freud here discusses totem-
ism merely as one of the elements entering into the origin of religion.
The importance of totemism is shown in the survival of traces of it in
many of the observances and usages of modem society. For the under-
standing of the underlying principles he turns to Frazer's Totemism and
Exogamy, although psychoanalytic interpretation may still differ from
his presentation. A totem is a material object to whom the savage
grants a superstitious reverence and with which there is a mutual rela-
tionship of protection toward the man on the part of the totem and a
peculiar guardianship and preservation of the totem on the part of the
clan to which it belongs. The totem object also binds the members of
a clan together as descendants of a common ancestor having common
duties and a mutual belief in their totem.
Traces of the religious and social significance of totemism seem to
point back to a time when these two elements were inseparable, when
the clan organization was dependent upon the common totem. The
consideration of the totem as the source of origin of the clan led to the
taboos against the use of the totem object as food or other form of
enjoyment by the clan to which it belonged. Taboos even against
touching it or looking upon it, which were liable to an automatic punish-
ment by sickness or death, reveal the fearful reverence in which it was
held. The totem object was mourned and propitiated like a true mem-
ber of the clan. The totem on its part was supposed to protect its clan
and serve as a supernatural power in the affairs of the clan. This rela-
323
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324 ABSTRACTS
tionship with the totem was an object of emphasis with the members
of the clan, through ceremonies of identification, and moreover the totem
was offered in a sacrificial death. The social side of totemism mani-
fested itself in rigid taboo and an extensive restriction. Mutual protec-
tion of the clan members and revenge were required on the one hand
and strict marriage and sexual taboo within the clan on the other, clan
membership exceeding strict family relationship. Sexual taboo arose
from the fear of incest and became the protection against incest rela-
tionships. Thus totemism stands in intimate connection with the system
of exc^amy.
Freud discusses at first the various views of totemism which have
been put forward by different authors under three theories of totemism,
the nominalist, the sociological and the psychological. The first derives
totemism from the use of animal names for men, through the need of
individual or group designations, or adopted from certain peculiarities
which suggested animal resemblances, which gradually became a sign
of origin from the animal the name of which was chosen. The absence
of animal names for individuals among earliest tribes, and the system of
maternal inheritance only make this origin untenable. Nor does it
account for anything more than the name. The system itself remains
unexplained. Lang believes that primitive man found himself with such
names and then elaborated his system to explain so important a posses-
sion as a name is to the savage man. The sociological theory sees in the
totem a visible representative of the primitive organization and its re-
ligion. Other forms of this theory derive the importance of the totem
from the importance to a tribe of a particular totem object, that is
especially in the satisfying of hunger. Primitive men however do not
confine themselves thus to one article of diet Neither is thus explained
the religious significance of the object which makes of it an object of
abstinence in eating. Frazer, building upon the myths of the Arunta
nation in Australia of a time when their forefathers fed upon their
own totem, believes that gradually the restriction upon the eating of the
totem grew up on the principle of increasing the supply through a sort
of cooperative magic Identification with the animal also led to preser-
vation through it of the man's own strength, while there was also a
desire to propitiate it. This again however does not explain the asso-
ciation of exogamy, and probably also the myths upon which it is based
are merely a product of wish phantasy of days when no such restriction
existed
The conception theory of the Aruntas led Frazer however to a
simpler, more original cause for totemism. The Aruntas believe that
conception occurs from the entrance into a woman's body of one of the
spirits, lurking at a certain totem spot, to be born. The child then be-
longs to this totem. This would lead to an identification with the totem
which would cause both restrictions on its use and ceremonial use of it.
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ABSTRACTS 325
The Aruntas are however far on the road of development as regards
totemism, so that a theory based upon their primitive beliefs also loses
weight. Another theory bases the origin of totemism upon the belief
in the wandering of the human soul and its tendency in such totemic
objects. This however may as well be a result as a forerunner of totem-
ism. Still other theories find the origin in the guardian spirit of the
ancestor or in the animals who by their swift movement or other charac-
teristics represent spirit animals, and thus represent the breath soul.
Exogamy is considered by some writers as an essential feature of
totemism, by others to be distinct from it. The latter view is strongly
upheld by Frazer. Under this exogamy has been thought derived from
the dearth of women which made it unusual and therefore finally im-
proper to seize women from one's own group. Others have considered
it a safeguard established against incest. It appears as a system of
" deliberate design " and seems to concern at first all other incest rela-
tionships but those of father and daughter. The reason why such an
institution should have arisen seems not, as some have thought, because
of a natural aversion to incest practices. Rather, as Frazer has pointed
out, it is against a natural inclination and desire on the part of mankind
that laws are directed. This is in accord with the discoveries of psycho-
analytic investigation, that the earliest sexual impulses of the individual
are of an incestuous nature. Abhorrence of incest is therefore neither
inborn nor a result of incest laws based on the conscious recognition that
it is harmful to the race. Incest taboo is probably older than opportunity
for such observation and moreover the actual existence of such ill re-
sult is still doubtful. Furthermore, hygienic considerations can hardly
be thus attributed to such primitive peoples. Neither could this explain
the deep abhorrence to incest which exists among primitive peoples to-
day even more than among civilized peoples. In the face of this igno-
rance therefore of the origin of the fear of incest, Freud brings forward
what might be called the historical origin of it. Aboriginal man prob-
ably lived in company with one or more females, which sole right he
maintained until a younger man was able to dispossess and slay him.
The younger man must then also maintain his position by driving out
all rivals until the rule was established " No sexual relationships within
the group." After totemism was established this became "No sexual
relationships within the totem clan."
Freud then turns the light of psychoanalysis upon this vexed ques-
tion. Children, he points out, have much the same attitude toward
animals that primitive people manifest Besides, their feeling of com-
radeship toward animals frequently turns to fear and becomes a distinct
neurotic phobia. In the few anal3rtic reports of such phobias which have
so far been made, the fear of the animal seems to be in the case of the
boy a fear of the father displaced over upon the animal. The " Analysis
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326 ABSTRACTS
of the Phobia of a Five- Year-Old Boy "* revealed such a fear in which
a death wish directed against the father had aroused a feeling of punish-
ment, which had then been displaced upon the horse. The child's feel-
ing toward the horse partakes of the ambivalence of affect which he
unconsciously entertains toward the father, that of rivalry and hatred
and that of respect and interest, which leads him to identify himself
with the beast. The phobia mingled itself with a castration phantasy
just as in a case reported by Ferenczi. In the latter also the ambivalent
attitude, this time toward feathered fowl, evinced itself in imitation-
identification and in ill-treatment of the fowls, a ceremonial form of
attack which ended in caressing and loving the badly treated creatures.
With all of this the child manifested a sexual wish phantasy in which
the members of his family were identified with the various members of
the chicken brood.'
From these illustrations Freud ventures to formulate one funda-
mental principle of totemism, namely, that the totem object is a substi-
tute for the father, as indeed primitive man has stated it in speaking of
the totem as his ancestor. This brings the two basal laws of totemism,
those which forbid the killing of the totem and the taking of any woman
belonging to the totemic clan, into connection with the crime of CEdipus
and the primitive wish of the child, the unsuccessful repression of which,
or its return, forms the kernel of the psychoneurosis.
Freud pursues this thought in a study of the religious observance of
the totem clan. He refers to the investigations of W. Robertson Smith
in regard to the sacrificial meal among early peoples. Animal sacri-
fice was probably the earlier form of sacrifice before offerings of first
fruits of the ground were made. These sacrificial feasts were occa-
sions when the god and men partook together of the same food. Eating
and drinking together was even among men a mark of fellowship with a
strengthening of social bonds and a sharing of social responsibility.
Such a ceremonial fellowship was not a family affair as we know a
family to-day but was possible only within the bond of clan kinship. No
important clan event could take place without the sacrifice of an animal
nor could the totem animal be slain except upon such a ceremonial occa-
sion. The killing of a beast otherwise forbidden was justified only when
the entire clan became answerable for it. The sacrificial beast was
treated like a member of the clan. " The group which offered the sacri-
fice, their god, and the animal sacrificed were of one blood, members of
one clan.'' In later ceremonies, when the original totemic sacrifice had
been replaced by the offering of certain sacred beasts, there seems to
have lingered yet the idea that the killing of the beast was intrinsically
a crime which must be followed by some sort of ceremony to avert evil.
1 Abstracted in Psychoanalytic Review, Vol 3, No. i.
* See Jelliffe and Brink, Role of Animals in the Unconscious, Psycho-
analytic Review, Vol. IV, Noi 3.
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ABSTRACTS 3^7
In spite of this fear of the killing of the sacrifice, the sacrifice justified
itself as the only means whereby the members of the clan could enter
into union with one another and with their god. It was based upon the
materialistic conception of identification only through the flesh and the
blood. The totem animal, the sacrificial animal of the earliest times, was
itself the primitive god through whose death and division among them
the clan members renewed and strengthened themselves. Freud be-
lieves with the author quoted that "the sacramental killing and mutual
sharing of the otherwise forbidden totem animal must have been a most
significant feature of the totem religion."
The sacrifice is followed by a very distinctive feature of the cere-
mony, the bewailing of the sacrificial animal, which is a forced mark of
grief designed evidently to remove the burden of guilt for the slaying.
Excessive revelry and rejoicing follow upon this, which in turn are the
natural expression for the festive freedom which has broken through a
strong taboo. Psychoanalysis teaches the meaning of this ambivalent
attitude toward the sacrifice when it reveals that the totem animal is the
substitute for the father. It discovers the same double attitude toward
the father which forms the father complex manifest in the unconscious
of children and adults alike. There is no trace however of a primitive
horde in which one man reigns supreme, forcing out all other sexual
rivals. Instead there arose, which still exist, bands of younger men, who
together dared to put an end to the primitive father horde, killed the
father and with cannibalistic instinct identified themselves with him by
dividing his flesh among themselves. Then the totem sacrificial feast
would be the return and the remembrance of that act, criminal though
it was, which formed the beginning of social organization, moral limita-
tion and religion. They were actuated by the same complex of hatred
and respect which is found in children and in neurotics. Better impulses
come to predominate after the death, sense of guilt and remorse cause
the dead to become more powerful than when he lived and there occurs
what psychoanalysis has called "belated obedience" (" nachtraglichen
Gehorsam"). The early transgressors forbid the killing of the totem,
the father substitute, deny themselves the enjoyment of it and of the
women they have won, thus creating the fundamental taboos of totem-
ism. The sexual taboo also proved itself necessary in order that the
group so formed should be able to live in harmony. The taboo in regard
to the totemic animal contained the beginning of all religions: the at-
tempt to silence the sense of guilt, to propitiate the father and obtain
from him the protection which would shield them from a similar fate,
to forget in the expiation and the belated obedience the original cause
from which the religious observance had arisen. One more element en-
ters into this religious beginning, the sense of triumph over the father,
which makes it a duty to rehearse the death of the father in the sacrifice
of the totem whenever the possession of the father's rights might seem
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328 ABSTRACTS
to be on the wane. This element in all sorts of disguises and altered
forms appears again and again in later religions. In time the better
feeling toward the father, strengthened by remorse, leads to the firmer
establishment of a brotherly regard which establishes the safety of the
brother clan and forbids murder. " Society rests now upon the sharing
of responsibility for a commonly committed crime, religion upon con-
sciousness of guilt and remorse for this, morals partly upon the necessi-
ties of such a society and in part upon the atonement demanded by such
a sense of guilt"
The further development of religion with its god idea out of such a
totemic beginning receives light from individual psychoanalytic investi-
gation. Here it is discovered that for each one God is conceived after
the pattern of the father, he is a heightened father. God is called Father
by his followers just as the totem adherents designated the totem their
ancestor. Certain relationships moreover exist between a god and the
sacred animal. Each god has his sacred animal or animals, which in
certain religions is offered to the god; the god is worshiped in animal
form or, otherwise expressed, the animal receives divine honors long
after totemism has been left behind; in myths the god frequently takes
animal form. All this points to the origin of god in the totem, and this
totem has appeared as the father representative. The original desire
toward the father (Vatersehnsucht) becomes transformed into a wish
to be like the father, which is expressed in the totem sacrificial meal.
This desire increases with time into an unfulfilled ideal, displacing the
original antagonistic feeling, which makes of the father god a powerful
and unlimited being, to whom the worshiper would submit himself.
The death of the god was not a foreign idea to the ancient mind and
the exaltation of the once murdered father to the god from whom the
race had its origin was a still more earnest attempt at reparation than
the substitution through the totem. This probably had an influence also
upon the social change to a patriarchal form of society.
Moreover the sacrificial scene represents the twofold attitude toward
the father as it changes his downfall into the greatest triumph. Gradu-
ally the sacrifice becomes one of the self toward god, a further expiation
of the sense of guilt. The sacrifice passes then out of the idea of ac-
countability. It becomes merely a desire, the will of the god. The god
idea itself has thus overcome its bestial origin. The hostile feeling of
the ambivalent attitude has not however been completely removed. The
human sacrifice as representative of the god, with its later substitutes
through animal and effigy, which has been traced down through later
religions, is still the ceremonial killing of the father in the god. The
element of mourning accompanying these sacrifices has still, as Robert-
son Smith has pointed out, a compulsive character due to fear of the
anger of the god. The two factors, the sense of guilt on the part of the
son and his self-exaltation, remain influenced however by cultural
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ABSTRACTS 329
changes, historical events and inner psychic development. With the rise
of agriculture the incest desire toward the mother source of strife with
the father satisfies itself upon Mother Earth. Hence arise the vegetable
gods, who then must in turn meet with punishment, but in whose resur-
rection the son again triumphs. The highest development of this appears
in the Christian religion which arose out of such beliefs. Christ silenced
in a new manner the old sense of guilt for he took upon himself the
sacrifice, voluntarily offering himself as the atonement to the father and
thereby freeing his brethren from the sense of guilt. He completed the
expiation for the original sin also by complete renunciation of the sexual
life with the woman. His triumph over the Father exceeded however
all that had gone before, since in his communion now the Father is set
aside and the brethren partake of the body and blood of the Son, who
has entered into the Father's place. The Christian Communion becomes
thus a return of the original deed for which atonement was made. It
has, as Frazer has said, "absorbed within itself a sacrament which is
doubtless far older than Christianity."
This setting aside of the father must have left its traces in the mental
life of the race. It gives a classic form to Greek tragedy, in which the
hero is regularly one who is suffering from some crime, often a hidden
and unusual one, rebellion against some divine or human authority for
which he must take upon himself the burden of punishment and thus
become the saviour of the chorus, who represent the brother group. In
the Middle Ages the same theme is represented in the Passion Play.
Therefore in the (Edipus complex may be seen the beginnings of reli-
gion, ethics, society and art, while psychoanalysis discovers in it more-
over the kernel of all the neuroses. Perhaps this father or parent com-
plex is also the source of that ambivalence of affect which permeates all
psychical life.
Freud acknowledges that these hypotheses cannot now be established
with utmost certainty nor are they quite free from difficulties. He pre-
supposes however that there exists a mass psychology in which this
feeling of guilt is preserved along with inherited dispositions, which are
awakened to life in each individual according to individual exigencies.
No impulses have been active in the psyche without leaving some traces.
Repression of them gives rise to substituted impulses and the reactions
which follow upon these. The unconscious psyche is in a position to
give the correct interpretation to these distorted expressions of original
impulses. The feeling of guilt has worked for the prevention of a return
of the original crime and in the case of the neurotic sets up thus unneces-
sary restrictions and limitations. Psychoanalysis teaches us that this
defense against criminal action arises not from actual deeds but from
wish phantasies, psychic reality, which both to the psychoneurotic and
to the primitive man have all the value of actual events, and exert the
same influence. These impulses and feelings are sufficiently strong to
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330 ABSTRACTS
produce the most serious ceremonial actions in both. Yet the neurotic
in childhood has yielded as far as possible to converting these impulses
into forbidden activity, and we can believe that primitive man was even
less restrained in putting his impulses into action. So that after all, even
with the neurotic and primitive overvaluation of psychic reality, Freud
considers himself justified in grounding this present discussion upon the
fact that " The deed stood at the beginning."
2. Nakedness in Saga and Poetry. — ^The desire for looking (Schau-
lust), Rank says, like its complementary instinct, the desire for exhibi-
tion (Zeigelust) discussed in the former part of this article,' manifests
itself in objective fashion in organic expression and in other external-
izing neurotic mechanisms as it does in the saga, while in poetic form
it remains in the region of phantasy and is thus more like the dream in
character. The idea of retribution, as Freud has shown, is responsible
for certain neurotic disturbances of the organ of vision, which makes of
them a punishment for transgression of the organ utilized by this look-
ing instinct. For the eye serves not only the functions of reality in the
interests of the ego but also is at the bidding of unbearable sexual im-
pulses, and so a conflict ensues which results in these disturbances of
vision. The eye denied the gratification of its sexual desire refuses
then to perform likewise its normal function, even while it thus punishes
itself for the forbidden desire. Freud refers to Tennyson's poem of
Lady Godiva, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry to save
the people from taxation. The punishment of blindness came upon the
one churl who peeped at her as she rode. Rank introduces Max Mell,
another poet, who suggests, instead of punishment contained in the blind-
ness, the refusal on the part of the eyes to serve any longer the ordinary
functions of reality since they had once gazed upon such beauty. This
idea of punishment of blindness for gazing upon the forbidden, especially
erotic nakedness, is an ancient mythical theme, in which the psycho-
logical connection may be traced. Among various Greek myths are those
of Tireisias and CEdipus, whose stories are bound together in the fate
of the latter, and both of whom are punished by blindness, self-inflicted
in case of the king, for looking upon that which is forbidden their eyes.
The story of CEdipus shows this directly as the looking upon the mother,
that of Tireisias reveals the same thing indirectly. This motive, repeated
more or less directly in the other myths, is confirmed by psychoanalysis,
which reveals the parents, particularly the mother, as the objects of the
child's peeping desire. The threat of blindness returns here likewise as
an attempt to turn him from the forbidden desire.
The variety of forms in which this motive may appear, as well as the
point of departure for various related groups of these forms, the author
finds in the Melusine saga. This relates how a certain nobleman finds
in the wood a beautiful maiden whom he marries and with whom he lives
» Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. IV, No. 4, p. 444.
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ABSTRACTS 331
happily until he breaks his promise not to see her at a certain time, or
according to one version, never to look upon her naked. At the moment
when his promise is broken the wife partially or completely turns into a
dragon or serpent and then disappears. Here the further development
of the motive shows itself in the displacement of the infantile taboo over
into the marriage relationship. The punishment of blindness has also
been modified and changed through later development. In the Melusine
saga the sons later present a number of eye abnormalities. The change
of the lower half of the wife's body into serpent form is due in part to a
repression of the original desire, the same mechanism of repression and
distortion which works so strongly in the psychoneurosis to render the
once desired parts hateful, disgusting, bestial and repulsive. Even to the
normal man however the female genital becomes at times revolting and
hateful, as during menstruation or parturition. Such is the interpreta-
tion which may be drawn from the Melusine saga if attention is also
given to the earlier part of the story, in which the curse of the dragon
form was put upon Melusine as an indirect result of her father's visita-
tion of the mother in her confinement. This form of saga shows on the
whole that both the taboo and the transgression are bound with the in-
fantile curiosity, especially exercised concerning birth and confinement.
This is repeated in a legend from Japan in which again the husband dis-
obeys his wife's command, peeps in upon her during confinement and
discovers her in the form of a dragon and as a punishment loses her.
The same disgust toward the woman may occur when her desire exceeds
that of the man, and this also is expressed thus through the mechanism
of projection in her change of form.
Another motive of the change of form appears in a dream which
Rank gives, in which the dreamer expresses her aversion to appearing
naked before the man and to the sexual act by transforming her body
into a form which renders the latter impossible. A similar Indian legend
shows the same motive and as the heroine, Urva^i, disappears as a water
fowl, reminds the reader of the swan-maiden motive. In these legends
the swan maiden is of elfin form, which is laid aside for human form
when surprised by a mortal and put into his power by his removal of the
swan covering which had been laid aside. The elfin form of swan or
beast, as the case may be, is again resumed and the woman disappears,
representing thus the forbidding of the sexual act at improper times.
Another form of this sexual taboo manifests itself in other saga
forms, in which a similar prohibition originates with the man, directed
toward the woman and her sexual curiosity. The well-known fable of
Cupid and Psyche relates her desire and her fear of her unknown lover,
half divine, half demon, who has forbidden her to look upon him. The
god-like form which she sees revealed when she in disobedience to his
commands strikes a light and gazes upon him contrasts with the re-
pulsive dragon form which the oracle had pronounced as her lover. This
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332 ABSTRACTS
double conception of the lover corresponds to the twofold feeling of
desire and fear in regard to the sexual embrace. The sexual meaning is
further emphasized by the two significant sexual symbols of the serpent
and the kindling of a light This untimely kindling of a light forms
again a feature of a Japanese saga, which, like the Indian myth and that
of Cupid and Psyche, introduces the transgression of the command
against looking, through the light kindled at a forbidden time. It con-
cerns the man who approaches his wife at such a period and also refers
to the disgust of the woman to whom the stimulated male genital seems
repulsive and of the man at the sight of the female genital at certain
times. The prohibition seems however in the greater number of sagas
to refer to the looking at the naked woman, whose genitals have become
repulsive or frightful because of the repression of the infantile peeping
desire whether in the neurotic form or in the occasional period of normal
life. This feeling has one of its deepest roots in the infantile theory of
the similarity of the woman's genitals to those of the man. The serpent
form then represents the mother's penis and the prohibition of the sexual
act is an incest avoidance, while the sojourn in the underworld to find
the woman, which also appears in this material, may be understood as
a phantasy of the mother's body. This motive of the woman with a
penis appears also in various forms of myth and helps to explain the
fright and horror of the heroes at the sight of the transformed woman's
form — ^into serpent, dragon, fish — ^as well as the neurotic sexual aversion
in symptoms and dreams.
The motive of invisibility therefore has the same effect as the punish-
ment of blindness for the forbidden looking. It is the robbing of the
elfin woman of her magic garments which binds her to the earth and to
the man, while she disappears, becomes invisible, as soon as she succeeds
in obtaining once more the magic garments. This being bound to the
earth and the man suggests again the hindrance motive in the first part
of this study. In the widespread Orpheus myth, in which the lover must
rescue his loved one from the underworld, he transgresses through his
impatient desire the command not to look upon her, touch or speak to
her. That this concerns the sexual desire is revealed by various inci-
dents in a number of myths where the sexual reference to the dead or
departed is clear. The nakedness motive appears clearly in the story of
the rescue of Istar from the lower world. At each of the seven doors
by which she enters some garment must be laid aside, to be resumed again
as she passes out with her rescuer, her lover son Tanmiuz (incest).
There exists in these myths both a death motive as punishment for un-
timely desire and the winning again of the woman. The invisibility of
the woman appears on the one hand as the projection of the sexual desire
of the man, for whom the sexual object shall appear only when he
wishes, on the other hand as a punishment of his unseasonable inclina-
tions through the disappearance of the woman. There is a positive em-
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ABSTRACTS 333
ployment of the invisibility motive in which the man through a woman's
garment or corresponding magic means, ring and the like, can make him-
self invisible and spy upon the woman as much as he pleases, as he once
wished to do as a child. This motive is also bound with the possession
of the woman through the seizing of her magic garments. The magic
ring, sword, boots, serve to make the man invisible or to transport him
or the loved one where he will, containing at the same time, as various
sagas show, the motive of invisibility as an opportunity for spying.
Again certain myths concern themselves with the boasting display on the
part of the man of the beauty of his beloved. This appears in the tale
of Gyges, which is told by Herodotus and elaborated by Hebbel in his
tragedy Gyges und sein Ring. The king boasts of the queen's beauty
and urges Gyges to spy upon her. It is through the magic ring, in the
latter version, that Gyges obtains sight of the queen in her room, after
which he murders the king and becomes the husband of the queen and
ruler of the kingdom.
This reveals the typical child phantasy and gratifies it through the
invisibility of the hero. It is the wish to spy upon the woman's naked-
ness and the intimacy of the marriage relationship and, roused by the
beauty of th^ woman (mother), to overcome the king (father) and
possess the mother. The tale justifies the killing of the father since it
makes the spying dependent upon his urging, and the killing due to the
entreaty of the dishonored queen.
A psychological contrast, result of repression, to the wish gratifica-
tion in the magic ring appears in the betrayal through the ring of the
hiding place of the invisible man and thus his deliverance into punish-
ment This motive is again joined to that of retributive blindness.
When Odysseus in the Homeric legend has escaped from Polyphemus,
whom he has blinded, he betrays his locality upon the ship twice by call-
ing out to the enraged giant, who then attacks him with great rocks and
almost overpowers him again. An older development of this motive, dis-
cussed by W. Grimm, contains the magic ring as a gift of the giant,
which holds the hero transfixed to some spot and compels him to call
out and reveal himself. He is able to save himself only by biting off the
finger which bears the ring. Here again also is the motive of being
chained to the spot, familiar in dreams and also in the preceding study
of the exhibition desire. In the sagas of this study it appears bound
with the motive of invisibility and also with blindness. The ring on the
one hand transports the hero where he wishes to go, or it reveals him to
the blinded enemy by making him call out to him his place of escape,
in either case it makes "visible"; on the other hand since to become
invisible again the finger must be bitten or cut off, there enters the idea
of retribution or punishment for the employment of invisibility to satisfy
the looking instinct. Further sagas show also the motive of nakedness
bound with this same magic use of the ring.
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Rank's study has therefore, as he summarizes it, revealed the various
forms of repression of the motive of nakedness as they proceed from the
ashamed and at the same time pleasurable gratification of the exhibition-
istic impulse, which in the naked dreamer is bound with the feeling of
being chained to the spot It finds in turn its rationalization in this
motive of being bound and further in the compensatory laying on of
garments in number and beauty of adornment. It finds moreover its
defense in bodily disfigurement, which produces revulsion and leads
again to the necessity of being unclothed. This finds its expression
pathologically in the skin diseases of the psychoneurotic. This same
defense motive of the exhibitionistic impulse is found again in the posi-
tive phase of this instinct, the looking impulse, in its neurotic retributive
form, that of blindness, which in its turn passes over through the objecti-
fied punishment to the positive satisfying of itself by means of the ren-
dering invisible of the subject himself. This once more meets its punish-
ment in the betrayal of the hiding place where it reveals itself as bound
with the motive of being restrained, with which the study began. This
means that the working out of the nakedness theme in poem and saga
owes its development to the infantile exhibitionistic and peeping tenden-
cies, or in other words the sexual curiosity which exercises itself espe-
cially about the forbidden sight of the parental sexual functions and or-
gans, particularly the organs of the mother. The same impulses there-
fore which strive for a gratification of the forbidden pleasure manifest
themselves in the same way as the restraining, repressing endeavor of
the culturally established ego, with now one, now the other tendency
predominating in the phantasy formation. This ambivalence manifested
in the development of these motives gives expression to the psycho-
analytically established fact that in the repressed material that which is
to be repressed is ever working its way through in some form or other.
This may be stated in another way: The repression is a continual
process, never decisive, never concluded, but according to the grade of
culture is always producing new forms and modifications of the subli-
mated instincts in the striving after satisfaction and under the influence
of the restraining taboos of culture.
The following scheme represents graphically this manifold develop-
ment of the nakedness motive from the standpoint of the peeping and
exhibitionistic impulses.
I. The looking instinct appears :
A, In the typical form of repression (retribution) as inability to
see, namely :
1. Subjectively symbolized in the neurotic defense form of
blindness and
2. Objectively in the motive of the disappearance of the love
object (her invisibility).
B. In the typical form of gratification as a carrying out of the look-
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ABSTRACTS 335
ing desire without punishment (return of the repressed
material), namely:
1. By means of one's own invisibility (subjective).
2. By means of the ability to make the loved object visible
at any time.
II. The exhibitionistic instinct appears:
A. In the typical form of repression as inability to show oneself
naked, namely :
1. Because of the subjective feeling of shame, which compels
to flight (while the looking desire arouses the opposite
sensation of inhibition of movement as in the dream) ;
2. Because of a tendency to concealment of the body, which
leads to the multiplying of beautiful garments (which
again serves to call attention to the wearer) ;
B. In the typical form of gratification as a carrying out of the look-
ing impulse without punishment, namely:
1. Through bodily disfigurement (repulsiveness, leprosy)
which necessitates disrobing and so serves the return of
the original repressed material ;
2. In the masochistically colored motive of being bound,
which brings about the involuntary restraint and with it
the being looked at, while at the same time it powerfully
overcomes the shame.
It is the purely psychological expression of these instincts which
manifests itself in blindness, feeling of restraint, shame, while the ob-
jectifying of the same is expressed by disappearance, being bound,
leprosy and the like. The latter are but materialized expressions of the
former. Poetry makes use of the former means but the saga, standing
nearer to reality, expresses itself through the latter. The various
motives represent a progressive development on the basis of a " secular
repression" (Freud) which moves from the original, purely subjective
dream situation and its poetic product to the more materialistic, external
saga form with its almost neurotic motive forms, which display again
the most intensive defense mechanism. The motive form is however not
only formally determined through the existing degree of repression but
seems also to follow the direction from the dream to the neurosis.
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Miscellaneous Abstract
The Psychologic Study of Judicial Opinion. By Theodore Schroeder.
California Law Review. Jan., 1918, Vol. VI, No. 2, pp. 89-113.
Judicial decisions should be criticized from the viewpoint of Ae evo-
lutionary status of the judge's desires and mental processes, rather than
according to the obvious results, and in the light of psychic determinism
instead of morality. Predispositions (prejudices) are inevitably uni-
versal and therefore, in themselves, immaterial. The only thing of im-
portance is to know at what evolutionary level the dominant prejudices
were formed. This is to be determined by analytic and evolutionary
psychology, partial concepts of which are briefly formulated. The judge
is on trial in every case before him.
"Every judicial opinion necessarily reveals a variety of choices.
There is a choice of materials from that offered in evidence, as well as
among possible precedents and arguments. A choice is made in that
which is approved as well as that which is ignored, or expressly disap-
proved. There is a choice of material brought in by the judge and not a
matter of record. There is choice in all that is emphasized, slighted or
distorted. A choice is evinced in the very words by which these other
choices are expressed Every such choice is a fragment of auto-
biography."
An unpublished actual judicial decision is made the subject of a
careful analysis of all the choices that are revealed, by comparing its
content with all legal alternatives. These choices thus made dear
reveal also the judge's emotional conflict, and so his dominant defensive
impulse in relation to the situation with which he is confronted. Choices
reveal character, and back of that must be experiences adequate to its
creation. Knowing the objective factors presented in the trial of the
case; and the judge's reaction thereto as revealed in his decision, as by a
process of subtraction we get at the judge's subjective biographical con-
tribution to the final result.
By such methods of analysis and a careful checking and accounting
for all possible alternatives, Schroeder concludes that in the decision be-
fore him every choice, even to the words, was determined by fear-inspir-
ing phantasies of wine, women and prostitutes. Other judges and their
official acts are indicated to further illustrate how judicial action is some-
times controlled by an unconscious over-determination of the " skeleton
in the closet" of the judge.
This essay is one of a number of efforts made by Mr. Sciiroeder to
introduce the psychoanalytic approach and the viewpoint of evolutionary
336
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MISCELLANEOUS ABSTRACTS 337
psychology into discussions of religion, philosophy and the social sci-
ences, (i. Hours with a Revivalist, a report from the psychologic view-
point, with Bibliography of author's essays on the Erotogenesis of Re-
ligion, Truth Seeker Co., N. Y. City, 1917; 2. Intellectual Evolution and
Pragmatism, The Monist, v. 26, pp. 86-112, Jan., 1916; 3. Psychic View
of the Pragmatic Issue, The Monist, Jan., 191 8; 4. Psychic Aspects of
Social Evolution, Liberal Review, June and July, 191 7; 5. Psycho-
genetics of Androcratic Evolution, Psychoanalytic Review, v. 2, pp. 277-
285, July, 191 5; 6. Psychology, Democracy and Free Speech, Medico-
Legal Journal, July, 1917, v. 34, No. 4, pp. 1-6; 7. The McNamaras,
Martyrs or Criminals, The Forum, v. 54, pp. 329-336, Sept., 1915; 8. In
Defense of a Chinese, Everyman, v. 11, No. 8, pp. 8-13, June, 1916; 9.
Criminology and Social Psychology, Medico-Legal Journal, v. 34, No. i,
pp. 1-8, Apr., 1917; 10. Mental Hygiene for Non-Combatants, Medical
Review of Reviews, Jan., 1918.)
A recent editorial in the Medico-Legal Journal reports this :
" Theodore Schroeder is of the opinion that a time will come when
no man will be considered fit for the judicial bench who has not first
submitted himself to an expert psychoanalyst for so thorough an analysis
that he knows the source and behavior of every impulse at work within
him, even those which are usually working subconsciously, and has a
thorough knowledge of the use of the scientific method as applied to
legal problems."
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VARIA
Fragments of Criminal Psychology. —
"She was very short, very stout, and she suffered terribly with
asthma. She was a most beautiful woman, Doctor, my mother was. We
had a painting of her and it stood on an easel, and I used to come and
kneel before it and worship it as though it were the picture of a saint,
and when the brute ignored her for other women, I killed him."
The inmate was just leaving after having served seventeen years for
the murder of his father.
II
"If anyone should tell you. Doctor, that a father cannot love his
daughter with the same love that a man bears for a woman, don't you
believe it I know it, so help me God ! " Then he had a fit of coughing
which left him very much confused and embarrassed, and it was with
difficulty that he resumed the interview. " You see, it was the treatment
of her by her step-mother that drew her so much closer and one thing
led to another, until — my God — I was a tiger, and not a man."
Inmate is just leaving after having served a sentence of eight years
for the rape of his sixteen-year-old daughter.
Ill
" What I objected to most was having my sister take me on her lap
and fondle me and call me ' Baby ' when I was a big boy, almost sixteen.
They always made me feel that I was not complete." Here he helps him-
self with his native tongue and says, " Ich war nicht reif. I have always
felt that. I could never pass my classes as the other boys did, and when
my father started me in business, I lost the money and the business.
Here in America I am washing dishes, but a thing like me is in great
danger in America. You see, in Germany they look upon this thing as
a sickness and here it is a crime."
He had just been admitted on a sentence of four years for sodomy.
IV
The man was just leaving after having served twelve years for mur-
der. He was prematurely old, intensely embittered, and full of hate for
society. He wasn't sure what finally led him to commit the act. He
338
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VARIA 339
knew he had been a fool to take up with a girl twenty years his junior
after he separated from his wife, but he did not mind her immorality.
" What hurt me most. Doctor, was to have been made a fool of by
this young flip — to see her use my money for entertaining young bucks —
so when I caught her one day with one of them, I killed her. That is all.".
B. Glueck
"Ceremonial Defloration." — Glancing out of my car window one
day I saw on the station platform a number of persons whose attention
was arrested by some occurrence out of my sight, towards the rear of the
train. It was an occurrence that aroused in all the lookers-on the same
emotion and it expressed itself in much the same way on the faces of all,
men and women, young and old, the loafers and the haste-bound, the
old lady fussing along with more bundles than she could carry, and the
lad lounging against the station wall, his cigarette forgotten. One and
all, with eyes lit up, mouths in an unset, self -oblivious smile, alike re-
laxed and eager, their whole beings as self-forgetful as children at a
circus and as self-expressive.
What was happening? There was no need to ask the grinning negro
porter standing so entranced near my open window. Only one incident
would make everybody look like that — ^the incident of a bridal couple, a
manifest bridal couple, tagged with an old slipper, wearing conspicu-
ously new clothes, hunted by rice throwers. For a moment everyone in
that station was a wedding guest, and getting as much enjoyment out of
that mating as conditions permitted.
In some parts of the world the enjoyment of a wedding is less cir-
cumscribed. Although the bride herself seldom furnishes the enjoyment
directly— ;iu prim<B nodes is an infrequent privilege of wedding guests —
the wedding music or singing is more exciting, the ceremonial figures or
masks in the bridal procession more expressive. And then the bridal
couple are themselves the objects of a closer and more untiring attention,
and for a longer time, even for a week or more. The couple are
zealously prepared — ^bathed, perfumed, adorned. They are mocked, bad-
gered, wailed over. They are serenaded, feasted, and finally with much
circumstance put to bed. Even there they may be watched.
A wedding is indeed a " social " occasion, a time too when sex im-
pulses go comparatively unchecked. The more restricted they are at
other times, the greater the emancipation at a wedding, the licensed
period for outburst. The old are especially fond of weddings, we may
note, and so is the more self-inhibiting sex.
But weddings are not always available circumstances, real weddings.
What then should a group of " merrymakers " do but " get up " a mock
wedding ? I once looked on at a mock marriage which was celebrated in
the saloon of an ocean steamer. The bride was a man, a large muscular
hirsute sample of virility, his chest well exposed in his white dicoUeti.
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340 VARIA
During part of the ceremony he smoked a cigar. The clergyman was
assisted by a physician who interrupted the ritual to make an examina-
tion of bride and groom, whispering the results in the ear of each. Be-
hind the bride's lamenting mother marched a waiter, bearing a trayful of
beer and wine bottles. The speeches were a mixture of dull American
coarseness spiced with suggestions of Viennese perversion — the ship's
doctor, an Austrian, played the part of the eugenics doctor.
Revealing as was the performance, I was less interested in it than in
its audience. Nobody appeared to think of the display as obscene or
even incongruous. The older ladies went on with their knitting, their
pleased smiles in accord with the giggles of the girls. The older men
stopped their reading or card playing or talking to move up nearer.
None in that company of over two hundred looked disgusted or per-
turbed; they were as amused and gratified as those other passengers in
the railway station. To none in either place did it occur that sometime
valued feelings — ^respect for the intimacies of sex, solicitude for its
privacy — ^were being violated. Nor did any one recognize in himself
that taste for exhibitionism which not uncommonly characterizes an
immature or impoverished sex life.
Elsie Clews Parsons
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BOOK REVIEWS
Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races. By Sanger Brown,
II, M.D. Richard G. Badger, Boston, 1916. P. 145.
This little book undertakes to set forth in an acceptable way the
simpler facts of sex S3rmbolism, particularly as found in religious and
ceremonial observances. The work is very clearly written, the facts
simply stated, and appeals, therefore, to the non-technical reader. The
author is a psychiatrist and has evidently had his interest in these mat-
ters aroused by the psychoanalytic movement in its various ramifica-
tions. The reviewer feels that it is unfortunate that a writer who is
capable of putting matters so simply and clearly should have after all
missed very largely some of the more important fundamentals. In the
latter part of the book, if he does not derive sex worship from nature
worship, he at least makes it appear at a later period in the development
of the race. In so doing it is as if he were to attempt an answer to the
question. Which comes first, the tgg or the hen?
White.
The Mastery op Nervousness, Based upon Self-Reeducation. By
Robert S. Carroll, M.D., Medical Director, Highland Hospital,
Asheville, North Carolina. Price $2.00 net New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1917. (9), 346 pages.
It is difficult for a medical man to evaluate a book of this kind, for
the effect which it will have upon the audience for which it is obviously
intended — ^the lay public — is a matter of guess-work. As an exponent of
the uplift — mens sana in corpore sano, work and play, be good and let
who will be clever, don't worry, overeat, or drug yourself. Dr. Carroll
seems to fulfill all the requirements. But such a facile philosophy is
always open to the objection that, while it apparently covers the vast
subject of neurosis, it fails to apply to individual neurotics. Slothful-
ness, overeating, drug-addiction, introspection, worry, and all the other
alleged causes of nervousness we know are themselves but S3rmptoms of
the neurotic character. Which is, according to Adler, a straining
towards a fictitious goal on account of a sense of inferiority which tends
to psychic over-compensation through the central nervous system. Or,
with Freud, we can say that the neuroses have a sexual etiology, of a
physical nature in neurasthenia, of an infantile nature in the psycho-
neuroses.
Dr. Carroll's solution of the problem of existence for the neurotics
is to attain harmony with life, "ultimate control by the moral idea,"
341
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342 BOOK REVIEWS
" a spiritual disregard for bodily feelings " " patience and thoughtfulness
and gentleness and increasing capacity for friendship." He says:
" With a simple, wholesome, harmony-seeking standard of life, all of its
complexities may be simplified," and so on.
This is indeed tepid pabulum. The neurotic is such because of con-
flicts between the pleasure-pain motif and the demands of reality and,
however acutely he may appreciate the moral value of such precepts, he
cannot regulate his conduct by them until his own conflict has been
analyzed and settled.
The style of the book is, as a whole, good, though a little turgid and
overstrained in places. Thus (page 66) : " But these same muscles hang
to many modem bones sluggish, inert, weakness-producing masses of
near-decomposition." And again (page 158): "Until mastered, our
emotional self is ever ready to rebel at reason, is eager and tugging to
assume the ascendancy and subjugate reason and will, and to rule our
minds with a despotic tyranny which knows no law, but fickleness, con-
siders no time but now, which recognizes no master but desire, and
obeys no voice but the call for gratification."
A few absolute errors may be detected. For example the statement
(page 30) : " Numbers of fearsome epileptics go through lives of fierce
uncertainty, the unhappy products of a single ancestral spree." This
theoy that is, epilepsy as the result of intoxication of one or both
parents at the time of impregnation, had only a passing interest, and was
soon definitely stamped " Not proved."
LiND.
The Psychoanalytic Method. By Dr. Oskar Pfister. Translated by
Dr. Charles R. Payne. New York, Moffat, Yard & Company,
1917. Pp. 588.
This work of Pfister's is the most ambitious attempt which has been
made to thoroughly present the whole psychoanalytic movement, par-
ticularly in its therapeutic aspect, in the light of personal experience.
Psychoanalysis as theory and practice is considered in its various rami-
fications and details and the points illustrated by a rich collection of
case material. Like all large comprehensive works it might be criti-
cized here and there, but taken as a whole it is a monumental work for
which we are indebted both to the author and in some respects even
more to the translator, because the task of rendering such a treatise into
English is tremendous.
The author is not a physician, but a pastor and a pedagogue and his
primary interests radiate from these two viewpoints. His cases, there-
fore, are naturally largely among children or young adults. To those
who see the psychoanalytic movement a moral menace this work ought
to serve as an enlightenment, showing as it does the minister and the
teacher going among his people and his children helping them in their
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BOOK REVIEWS 343
distress, using the principles and the technique of psychoanalysis, and
dominated by the highest religious and educational ideas.
As might be expected the latter part of the work, in which the author
deals specifically with the problems of religion and of education, is per-
haps the happiest He sees in the teachings of Jesus what he believes
to be perfectly expressed truths and what the psychoanalysts have seen
for many years, namely the expressed wisdom of the folk soul. His
discussion of the problems of education should be read by every teacher
and by every superintendent of an institution which takes care of chil-
dren. The ineffectualness of approaching the difficulties of children or
adults, for that matter, solely at the conscious level needs to be empha-
sized over and over again. This is particularly true in the matter of
corporal punishment. Here not only is the argument, as such, a failure,
but instead of merely failing to convince, danger is encountered of doing
positive injury by creating emotional reactions which serve still further
to cripple the individual in his dealings with realty. The book deserves
a wide reading.
White.
Experiments in Psychical Research at Leland Stanford Junior
University. By John Edgar Coover. Published by the Uni-
versity, Stanford University, California, 191 7. Price $3.50 paper;
$4.00 buckram ; $5.00 half morocco.
This rather awe-inspiring volume of some 600 pages represents a
decidedly new departure in the field of psychical research. It is a re-
port by Assistant Professor Coover, appointed as fellow in psychical re-
search in the Leland Stanford University, under a ten thousand pound
grant made by Mr. T. W. Stanford, brother of Leland Stanford to the
university trustees and placed at their disposal for investigations in
spiritualism and psychical research practically without any qualifying
restrictions. It is the first time, to all intents and purposes, that an
accredited institution of learning has taken up this subject in a serious
way. Heretofore it has, for the most part, either been exploited by
individuals for personal gain or investigated by biased enthusiasts. The
object of the present research could only be for the purpose of intro-
ducing substantially well accredited observations by persons of ac-
knowledged scientific training into a field where before these qualities
have been singularly lacking.
The general results of the work are what might have been expected.
Nothing any more stimulating than a conformity of results to the nor-
mal expectations on the theory of probabilities based upon the assump-
tion that the individuals were guessing, seems to have been demon-
strated. No evidence has arisen in the course of the work which has
tended to substantiate such alleged phenomena as telepathy, thought-
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344 BOOK REVIEWS
transference, and the like. And so the volume stands for the most
part as a monument to negative evidence, but as such of course has its
importance in this very much discussed field.
The reviewer, however, cannot refrain from the comment that many
of the phenomena in this field are quite capable of scientific interpreta-
tion which for the most part has been entirely overlooked in this work.
I refer naturally to the psychoanalytic method of approach and to the
psychoanalytic interpretation. Of course such a method of interpreta-
tion cannot be applied in the wholesale way in which the investigation
is made in this work. It is essentially an individual study. The mass-
ing of figures from many experiments and numerous individuals such
as the author employs tends naturally to eliminate individual differences
and reduce the results to what might be expected on the theory of
guessing and the calculus of probabilities.
The work may have value in helping the minds of those who are
more or less at sea with regard to these questions to come into stable
equilibrium, but for those who are interested and have a knowledge of
psychoanalysis the whole investigation seems to be rather useless. Such
a study, for example, as that of Jung's on the Psychology of Rumor, in
his recent work on Analytical Psychology is much more to the point
and much more valuable. Such studies, however, will probably not be
largely in evidence until psychology gets away from its old moorings
and recognizes that it is not the sensation but the wish which is the
unit of psychic life.
There are a great many interesting suggestions throughout the work,
suggestions which might very well be taken up from the psychoanalytic
point of view, and the reviewer thinks to very much better advantage
than from the point of view taken in this work. Such studies, as, for
example, of the terms imposed by judges in sentencing criminals, show-
ing the preferential attitude of mind which the judges have for certain
sentences rather than others, preferences for certain numbers, and the
whole large subject which is discussed under the heading of Mental
Habit and Inductive Probability, showing how certain trends of per-
sonality, to use psychoanalytic terms, express themselves in the results
of observation, for example of star magnitudes, of temperature, cloudi-
ness, rainfall, etc.
The University is to be commended for its courage in taking up for
serious study a subject about which so much prejudice and superstition
revolve.
White.
NOTICE.— All busineu communications should be addressed to Tfae
Psychoanalytic Review, 36x7 Tenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
All manuscripts should be sent to Dr. William A. White, Saint Elira*
beth's Hospital, Washington, D. C.
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW
A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO AN
UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN CONDUCT
Volume V October, 191 8 Number 4
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN^
By Thomas Verner Moore
It is maintained by Jung that there is in every organism one
single fundamental energy which has various manifestations. This
concept is based on an analogy drawn from physical science. Phys-
ical energy has various forms, appearing now as heat, now as move-
ment, now as light, now as electricity, now as a chemical change.
But at bottom it is all one and the same energy, and must, in the
last analysis, be looked upon as that which moves a mass with a
given velocity. So Jung sees in the various strivings of a human
being, whether for the pleasures of the sense or of the mind, whether
noble or ignoble, whether as a child or as a man, the manifestations
of one and the same psychical energy, the libido of the organism.
It has long seemed to me that one must admit that there is in
human nature a driving force which, however Protean its forms,
never loses its identity. At the same time it appears also that this
driving force does not exhaust the kinetic apparatus of our nature.
The two steeds in Plato's chariot may have to be reduced to one
that has good moods and bad moods, that may at times move along
quietly, with a dignified and noble bearing; and then again dash
ahead and threaten to wreck the chariot and kill the charioteer.
But whether leisurely or with dash and spirit the one horse always
moves and when he is moving his head must always be pointed to
some of the many points of the compass, and in the normal human
being, there is some kind of guidance and control which is being
exercised over his movements.
^ Read at the Washington Psychoanalytic Society, January 12, 1918.
345
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346 THOMAS VERNBK MOOSE
The question is akin to the ancient one of the distinction between
4&an} and cuSdviom. If we grant a distinction between pleasure and
happiness then the satisfaction of tibido in any of its many forms
is the source of pleasure, but the contentment which arises from the
control of libido is happiness.
There are several things in psychoanalytic studies which would
suggest this distinction. Thus Freud warns against what he terms
wilde Psychoanalyse, and points it out as a serious mistake to advise
the indiscriminate satisfaction of sexual cravings as a cure for un-
happiness arising from an unfortunate marriage. He does not
make the distinction I have pointed out, but it could well be made,
and the psychoanalyst would be closer to human nature as it is if
he would keep in mind primarily the individual who exercises a
guidance and control over his libido strivings in their multifarious
manifestations.
Then there are phenomena even in our dream-life which would
indicate the existence of such a guiding factor. The censor of con-
sciousness may, after all, often turn out to be a factor distinct from
libido in any of its manifestations.
One could approach the problem of the distinction between
libido and control from various well-recognized standpoints of the
psychoanalytic school. But another and more truly empirical pro-
cedure is to analyze the facts of individual experience and see what
bearing they have upon libido and the restrictions placed upon it by
other factors in the psycho-physical organism. To do this to best
advantage we should be able to look at the whole life of some
human being and see the operation of the libido and the restrictions
placed upon it.
With this problem in mind I turned to Francis Thompson and
reread his great masterpiece, The Hound of Heaven. How lumi-
nous this poem appears when we read it from the psychoanal3rtical
point of view as the autobiography of the author! It is the story
of the strivings of the libido. At first, it is described as unchecked,
uncompensated, and without any sublimation. Then we see the
efforts of a poetic genius to direct the libido, first in one channel
and then in another, and finally we witness the triimiph of the indi-
vidual over the libido in a religious sublimation.
When Francis Thompson speaks, in this poem, of his flight, he
describes the devious paths that he pursued, driven by the desires
of the human heart. This flight is the wandering of the libido —
a wandering experienced by all, but only by a few in the violence
and intensity of the fall and resurrection of Francis Thompson.
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 347
Contrasted with the blind force that drove him on, seeking freedom
from the restrictions laid upon him by the moral law, is the expres*
sion of that law in his own mind, the voice of conscience, which
acts as a restraining force, blocking the manifestations of the
libido, now in this channel, now in that, until the libido, worn out by
its very wanderings, exhausted in its flight from the "Hound of
Heaven," is caught in the only channel left open to it and pours
itself forth in a religious sublimation.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years ;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind ; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes, I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasm6d fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurr3ring chase.
And unperturbed pace.
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy.
They beat — and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet —
" All things betray thee, who betraycst Me."
The flight from the Hound of Heaven is the reaction of his
nature to the insistence of his environment. As a child he had been
given a religious education — first, at the little school of the Nuns of
the Cross and the Passion. The voice of conscience that spoke to
him was from the first a religious voice, and it never ceased to speak
even though he ''fled it down the nights and down the days, and
down the arches of the years, and down the labyrinthine ways of
his own mind."
As a child, he loved play, loved it excessively, and shut himself
up in the dream world of his play. He loved his little games with
his sisters, but the games meant one thing to them, another to him.
" My side of the game," he said, " was part of a dream scheme in-
visible to them."*
His family entertained hopes that he would one day enter the
priesthood, and, with this in view, they sent him to Ushaw College.
But he was one of those spirits to whom institutional life was par-
ticularly hard. He did not relish being wakened rudely from his
childish dreams and sent away from the shelter of his home where
he played with his sisters and idealized and fell in love with his
« Cf, Life by Meynell, p. lo.
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34^ THOMAS VERNE& MOOSB
favorite doll* At Ushaw he manifested that shut-in reaction type
which might readily have developed into a full-grown dementia
prttcox. In his essay on Shelley, he describes most exactly what
psychiatrists will at once recognize as a typical praecox reaction :
'^So beset, the child fled into the tower of hb own soul, and
raised the drawbridge. He threw out a reserve, encysted in which
he grew to maturity unaffected by the intercourses that modify the
maturity of others into the thing we call a man."*
But in describing Shelley, he was but telling what he had ex-
perienced in himself.
This shut-in type of reaction is after all but one of the many
manifestations of the libido at its lower levels. The individual
shrinks from the activity of the conscience principle which would
direct the energies of the organism away from the self to the call
of common, ordinary duty. Pleasure lies in inactivity, in doing
nothing useful, in not taking one's part in the world, in living a
life of dreams, in loving ideals and not realities. All share in this
type of reaction to some extent and during some part of their
lives. It is natural to children — but they shake it off as they enter
into real life. When those in whom it is pathologically developed
first come in contact with the world, they shrink back and close
up like the bell animalcule when it touches a foreign object.
When Francis Thompson went to Ushaw, he experienced his
first contact with the world. In a notebook he recalls his first
impression of that contact. " Fresh from my tender home, and my
circle of just-judging friends, these malignant schoolmates who
danced round me with mocking evil distortion of laughter — God's
good laughter, gift of all things that look back the stm — were to
me devilish apparitions of a hate now first known; hate for hate's
sake, cruelty for cruelty's sake. And as such they live in my mem-
ory, testimonies to the murky, aboriginal demon in man."'
Two of his friends who knew him intimately at school were
much surprised when they learned later that he was so unhappy.
His school environment was not a harsher one than that of other
boys, but his nature was more sensitive, and he reacted to his sur-
roundings by hating them and shrinking back still farther into the
cavern of himself.
While a schoolboy his praecox tendency did no more harm than
» Cf. Life by McyncU. p. la
* Cf, Essay on Shelley. London, Bums & Oates, 1909, pp. 33-54.
» Cf. Life by McyncU, p. 18.
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 349
mark him out as queer and indolent. He would not study what he
did not like, for his libido as yet did not let him out of himself.
But he loved literature and excelled all others in his English com-
positions. His parents were notified at the end of his collie
career that Francis had no vocation to the priesthood. His father,
a successful physician, then determined that he should study medi-
cine.
Here the conflict between his self-seeking and the duties of real
life first commenced to be of serious moment. He would not study,
and followed his life of dreaming; reading poetry in the libraries,
and visiting museums and galleries. In one of these he sees a statue,
the Vatican Melpomene, and thither each evening as twilight fell he
would steal "to meditate and worship the baffling mysteries of
her meaning." Much of his time was spent at the cricket field.
In the evening he would often come home late, saying that he had
been taking private instructions with one of the lecturers. It was
later found that he was visiting the home of a musician, listening to
him play the piano.
At about this time his mother — shortly before her death — gave
him a copy of de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater. In-
troduced dius innocently to the mysteries of opium he sought to
experience himself what de Quincey described, and became an addict
until the time of his awakening. After utterly failing in his med-
ical studies, he left home and we;it to London, alone and penniless.
This is to be explained as a further shrinking into himself. He
could not bear to have those he loved look upon the ruin of his life,
and so he went where no one would know. and none would care.
Here he became a veritable pariah, sleeping often in the open or in
cheap lodging houses, doing odd jobs, trying but failing in his
attempts to do business as a bootblack, spending on opitun what
pennies were spared by the stern demands of hunger.
During all this time, while he was following the drive of the
libido at its lower levels, the conscience principle was not dead
within him. His attitude of mind is expressed in the Hound of
Heaven. He is flying the Divine voice of conscience. He will not
turn to look though he hears the footsteps of the Master. He
shrinks from conscience. He can not obey with a half-hearted
service ; he must seek God as the mystic seeks Him if he will seek
at all
For though I knew His love Who followed.
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.
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350 THOMAS VERNE& MOOKB
He feared lest he should in some way be driven into the conflict with
his libida — a conflict which he had avoided from earliest childhood.
It was this shrinking that made him fail in all but literature at
collie. He had not failed in that because it had helped him to
live on in his world of dreams. Because he would not forsake this
world of dreams, he disappointed his father, refusing even to enter
on a medical career, wasting his days watching cricket, devoting the
twilight to amorous musings over a statue, and seeking at night to
feel the expression of his pent-up self while listening to the musical
productions of the classic composers. But whether he stayed at
home or sought to bury himself in the depths of darkest I/mdon,
whether in the dreams of poetry he ''troubled the golden gateway
of the stars, smiting for shelter on their clanged bars," or following
the libido drive, he " clung to the whistling mane of every wind,"
whether he suffered the pangs of hunger in direst poverty or sought
surcease of sorrow in drugged oblivion.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a voice above their beat, —
** Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
In London he reached the lowest depths of his career. His turning
point came in a very natural way — ^in an apparent accident of his
life, which prepared him for a process of sublimation, the natural
mechanism of man's elevation to higher things. His first attempt
at sublimation was precipitated by an act of kindness done him by
a young girl, when, famished with hunger, he was an outcast in the
streets of London. He describes this in a little poem entitled "A
Child's Kiss." He tells of his long watching through the night, and
how he thought he was dying of hunger.
Bled of strength
I waited the inevitable last
Then there came past
A child, like thee, a spring flower ; but a flower
Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,
And through the dty streets blown withering
She passed, — O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! —
And of her own scant pittance did she give.
That I might eat and live:
Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 351
Were we to judge from the poem alone, we might think that this
was a single kindly act of some poor waif who shared with him her
crust of bread. But from Everard Meynell's life we learn more:
" This girl gave out of her scant and pitiable opulence, consist-
ing of a room, warmth and food, and a cab thereto. When the
streets were no longer crowded with shameful possibilities, she
would think of the only tryst that her heart regarded, and, a sister
of charity, would take her beggar into her vehicle at the appointed
place and cherish him with an affection maidenly and motherly, and
passionate in both these capacities. Two outcasts, they sat mar-
veling that there were joys for them to unbury and to share."'
He had not been partaking of her hospitality long when he heard
that one of his poems had been published, and that the editor of
Merry England wanted to give him constant employment. He told
his outcast hostess of his success, expecting her to rejoice with him.
But instead, she told him that he must go to his new-found friends,
and leave her. "They will not understand our friendship," she
said, and then : " I always knew that you were a genius." And so
she fle3 "a swift and trackless fugitive." In vain he sought her
at the old trysting places. In vain he haunted the streets, looking
for her. In vain he put off the offer of Mr. Meynell to accept per-
manent employment. She was lost beneath the vast human sea of
darkest London.
The loss of this trackless fugitive was the "gust of His ap-
proach" that clashed to the gates through which his lower libido
strivingps had found their outlet. They could no longer flow in the
same low channels. Were it not that these channels were closed
at the same time higher ones were c^ned their closing might have
resulted in mental disaster. But after he had sought his trackless
fugitive long in vain, he allowed himself to come under the kindly
saving influence of Mr. Meynell. He saw home life again, and again
came in touch with innocent little children — ^not such as he had
known in
the places infamous to tell
Where God wipes not the tears from any eyes.
Later, recalling the memory of his outcast days, he wrote, " Think
of it! If Christ stood amidst your London slums. He could not
say: * Except ye become as one of these little children.' Far better
• life, pp. 8i-^
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352 THOMAS VERNER MOOKB
your children were cast over the bridges of London, than that they
should become as one of these little ones."^
What wonder, that when he was thrown again with real little chil-
dren, sweet and innocent and clean, with Rose and Lily and Daisy
and Daisy's sister blossom or blossom sister Viola, he should learn
to love them as he had never loved before.
I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid ;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
Thiy at least are for me, surely for met
The girl who had befriended him was remembered as a little child,
idealized and personified in childhood. It was his first sublimation
— ^yet still the same libido flowing on — ^no longer carrying him down-
ward in its torrent, but floating him gently upward to a higher spirit-
ual level. In every child he saw the face of his trackless fugitive.
And when he learned to love a little child, and kissed her inno-
cently, it seemed to him as if he kissed her who gave him of her
own scant pittance that he might eat and live. She lived in child-
hood as he writes to his child love in the poem entitled A Child's
Kiss.
Therefore I kissed in thee
The heart of childhood, so divine for me,
And her, through what sore ways.
And what unchildish days.
Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.
Therefore I kissed in thee
Her, child, and innocency,
And spring, and all things that have gone from me,
And all that shall never be;
All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss.
Came with thee to my kiss.
These lines are but the description of the far-reaching sublimation
of the lower libido strivings in his love of childhood. Several of
his choicest poems tell of his love of children. It was a love which
must have endured with him to the end — ^though it was capable of
satisfying his soul for only a very brief period. In a poem entitled
The Poppy, he tells how this beautiful and innocent sublimation
commenced to crumble.
Y Cf, Ufe by Meynell, p. 8a
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 353
A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.
Suddenly the child plucks one of the poppies through which they
are walking : plucks it and throws it to him.
She tum'd, with the rout of her dusk South hair,
And saw the sleeping gypsy there ;
And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim,
With — " Keep it, as long as you live !" to him.
The flower of sleep, plucked by the hand of a child and given to
him as a token of love to be kept as long as he lived, awakened
from oblivion the memory of his withered past.
And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers
He knew the twenty withered years —
No flower, but twenty shriveled years.
The libido channels of those shriveled years have Keen blocked and
the stream of desire forced upward to higher things, and now seeks
an outlet in the love of childhood.
Oh! child, I love, for I love and know.
The love of the past is linked by memory to the love of the present
and just at the moment when his heart is about to overflow in the
channels of its sublimation, the past rises up to his mind and he
realizes that he is a man and she a child, and between the two are
his twenty shrivelled years ; and guilt dares not seek fellowship with
innocence. And then, besides, the loves he had known before were
so short and fickle. Had he not known by experience
The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall
Where some rise early, few sit long.
And what can be more fickle than the love of a child?
O frankly fickle and fickly true.
Do you know what the days will do to you?
To your love and you what the days will do,
O frankly fickle and fickly true?
And then he ponders sadly over his wasted life. He thinks of
others, the friends of his childhood, who did not waste their youth,
whose twenty years were not withered and shrivelled, but full of
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354 THOMAS VERNER MOORE
days and works, fat and plump as the grains of wheat amid which
the poppy — ^the withering flower of dreams — swayed its head. But
he cannot contemplate the past without seeking compensation in the
future. It is one of the necessities of the human heart to seek in
some way to make good for the time and opporttmities it has wasted.
And so Francis Thompson sees in his own poems, which are but the
expression of his agonies past and present, the means by which he
is to make good his shriveled years and stand with honor beside
the friends of his youth. The very sins of the past are to be trans-
formed into the poems of the future, which would never have been
written had he not wasted those twenty years, and then tried to
express his withered, withered dreams.
I hang 'mid men my needless head.
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the smi-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap; but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, the sleeper.
Of me, the sleeper! how pitiable this line rings when the image
of the poet rises up to our minds, drugged and unconscious in dark-
est London.
About this time there became active another force which helped
to lead him from the lower levels of his libido striving. He gives
us an account of this in the charming personal little poem, Manus
Animam pinxit The psychoanalyst will find therein many expres-
sions which indicate the sublimation of a merely human love and
bear witness to the struggle which went on in a noble mind in its
passage ** per aspera ad astra." Havig loved with a carnal love we
find him in this poem painting an ideal woman to whom he cries.
Lady, who hold'st on me dominion t
Within your spirit's arms I stay me fast
Against the fell
Immitigate ravening of the gates of helL
He feels, with perhaps an element of masochism in the feeling, his
utter dependence upon her.
Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from
The deft, Sweet, of your skyward- jutting souL
He begs her to be true to her soul as he is to her.
For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole
Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 355
Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through
Dry down and perish to the foodless root
He asks her, his chastest one, to take his curbed spirit and
This soul, which on your soul is laid
As maid's breast against breast of maid.
She has engraved her soul upon his own. Her love has made him
like herself. " The copy is a painful one, and with long labor done."
H she doubts, let her come and look.
Your beauty, Dian, dress and contemplate
Within a pool to Dian consecrate I
Unveil this spirit, lady, when you will,
For unto all but you 'tis veiled still :
Unveil, and fearless gaze there, you alone,
And if you love the image— 'tis your own.
The same libido which he now terms ''the immitigate ravening of
the gates of hell " enters into this picture of his spiritualized ideal.
It lends a charm to the labor of love — ^the transformation of his life
that he may gain the respect of one who did not shrink from the
depth of his degradation. It lent a charm, a peculiar indescribable
attractiveness to this "chaste and intelligential love.'^ But it did
not drive him on as the lower libido did only a little while ago.
Then he was a passive being, incapable of any exertion. But now
he experiences something wholly new — ^painful and sustained effort
— ^the domination of the libido. And yet this domination, "most
hardly won," by long and painful labor, is assisted by the libido
itself, whose lower outlets have been blocked and now flows over,
lending a sensual charm to his spiritualized ideal. He was perhaps
innocently ignorant of the real source and cause of the tenderness
of his love and the pleasure he took in yielding to this lady the do-
minion of his soul. But nevertheless he felt this charm, whether
its source and origin was utterly unconscious or flitted about on the
outskirts of his mind. But this charm was not the only factor; it
simply aided in a battle " most hardly won/' which gave him a claim
" of chaste fidelity upon the chaste.'*
Simultaneous, apparently, with the influence of this lady — ^who
formed the subject of the poems entitled Love in Dian's Lap —
there seems to have come to him the realization that the love of
childhood could not give complete and perfect satisfaction to his
human heart. Their very innocence reproached him and brought
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356 THOMAS VEKNER MOOU
up to his mind the memory of his withered years. The period
during which he first poured out his soul in the love of little
children seems to have been a short one. It was the reaction of
his mind to the beauty of a life that he felt could never be his —
when he passed from the squalor of London poverty to be an hon*
ored guest in happy English homes. But it was not long before
he realized that there were many reasons why the love of children
and of childhood could not give his soul that satisfaction which it
craved. This realization developed a hundredfold the feeling of
guilt and unworthiness that oppressed his soul. Therefore, he
utters the complaint that
... just as their jroting tyts grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there.
Their angel plucked them from me t^ the hair.
From children, he turned to Nature. Several of his poems
reflect the attempt of a poet to slake the thirst of his human soul
in the beauty of Nature. She was to him a personal something
''Few/' he says, "seem to realize that she is alive, has almost as
many ways as a woman, and is to be lived with, not merely looked
at."* He went so far even as to sleep at night in the woods that he
might live with his new-found spouse. He sought to know her —
but know her in a poetic fashion, and dream about her, as once he
dreamed about his doll, and later of the statue in the museum with
which as a boy he had fallen in love. Though he vainly boasts of
his knowledge of Nature, " he could not distinguish the oak from
the elm, nor did he know the names of the commonest flowers in the
field/'* What he contemplates in nature is not science but beauties
which express the subconscious yearnings of his souL
Love and love's beauty only hold their revels
In life's familiar, penetrable levels.^^
Turning then from the children of men he calls to Nature's children.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's — share
With me (said I) your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip.
Let we twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
* In a letter to Mrs. MeynelL Life, p. 131.
» Life, p. 131.
" Poet and Anchorite.
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 357
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais.
It was not long before he felt the coldness of Nature's response.
His night in the woods seems never to have been repeated. In an
essay on Nature's Immortality he expresses in prose his dissatisfac-
tion with this attempt at sublimation. " You speak, and you think
she answers you. It is the echo of your own voice. You think
you hear the throbbing of her heart, and it is the throbbing of
your own. I do not believe that Nature has a heart ; and I suspect,
that like many another beauty, she has been credited with a heart
because of her face."*^
In the Hound of Heaven the same complaint is uttered in more
symbolic language. With perhaps a memory of his night spent
voluntarily in the woods or perhaps of those many nights when
poverty forced him to sleep beneath the stars, he says :
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah ! we know not what each other says.
These things and I ; in sound / speak —
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth ;
Let her, if she would owe me.
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness :
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Francis Thompson was slowly being made to realize that life
does not consist in dreaming, and that he could not be satisfied by
shutting himself up within the narrow confines of his own petty
spirit. His burial in darkest London had terminated in a resurrec-
tion — ^ coming to life, which he had done but little to accomplish.
In the depths of London he had found his child love
Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring a flower,
And through the city-streets blown withering.
^^ A Renegade Poet and Other Essays, Francis Thompson, Boston, 1910,
pp. 95-96.
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358 THOMAS VERNER MOORE
He had found her, but to lose her, and be wakened suddenly by the
pang of her loss from the sleep of his dream life with her. And
when she remained a trackless fugitive, he could no longer hide
himself in a tomb now made chilly by her absence. And so he left
this tomb and came to life again. And then he sought to shrink
back once more from the sunlight of real life and return to child-
hood in the love of children. Life brought him once more face to
face with cold practical duty. It forced obligations upon him that
were incompatible with the pleasures of his dreams; obligations
from which all his life he had fled. By flight, however, he did not
escape from the conflict going on within him, but merely changed
the battlefield. In one form or another the insistence of the real
world was ever threatening to break into the citadel of his dreams
and disturb the peaceful slumber of his sublimated selfishness.
This insistence seemed to grow louder and louder as one attempted
sublimation after another was dissipated into nothingness. It was
a voice speaking within his soul. It seemed to be more than the
ordinary dictates of conscience. He was literally pursued by a
Divine Personality who allowed him no escape, for,
if one little casement opened wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Gone was his trackless fugitive — gone too the peace and joy he
hoped to find in the love of childhood, in which she was personified,
and when he turned to Nature, he did not even find the outlet for
his affections which a poet's spirit had anticipated. There is no
hope, there is no joy, there is no peace in any dream.
Nigh and nigh, draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
And past those noised Feet
A Voice comes yet more fleet —
Lo 1 naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.
The ideal of duty rises in his mind in spite of him. He has no
choice. He must compare what he is with what he might have been,
the waste of dreams with the accomplishment of reality, his twenty
withered years with the two decades his schoolmates have made to
blossom and bear fruit heavy with utility. How utterly hopeless
the present seems, how sinful the waste of the past!
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 359
In the rash lustihood of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me ; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years —
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke.
Have puffed and burst as sun starts on a stream.
Those who are blessed with the fruits of this world's loveliness,
those who have a home, a place, a position and wealth enough to
make the wheels of life's chariot roll on with ease, and good fame
sufficient to gain the credit and applause of their own neighbor^^
these may find sublimations that will offer a measure of human
peace and content which is illumined only by the shadow of Divin-
ity. But those who like Francis Thompson look back upon their
withered shriveled life, who with him must say
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust ;
And now my heart is as a broken fotmt,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that
Shiver upon the sighful branches of my mind.
For such as these there is no human consolation, there is no natural
power of sublimation, there is no object on which the heart can set
its affections, there is no hope of happiness, for man cannot be happy
unless he loves and is loved again in return.
Who cares for the fallen creature " forlorn and faint and stark "
who homeless wanders the streets enduring ''through watches of
the dark the abashless inquisition of each star," who is the very
"outcast mark of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny," suffering
" the trampling hoof of every hour in night's slow-wheeled car " —
who cares for the fallen outcast? And if he cares enough to help,
can any care enough to love? But has not the outcast a human
heart, and is not that heart like all human hearts who in order to
be happy must love and be loved again? And so for him whose
Spring has vanished utterly, whose hopes are extinguished, and
whose days are told — ^there is none to whom he dares to turn.
It was this that Francis Thompson experienced when he felt as
if the unseen Qirist said to him
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee, love, apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught
And human love needs human meriting:
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360 THOMAS VERNER MOORB
How hast thott merited —
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art I
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
Whatever some may think of the nature of a religious sublima-
tion, few will deny its utility, or fail to recognize that in many cases
it gives the only hope of alleviation in mental difficulties where to
reconcile opposing forces is impossible. To Francis Thompson final
submission to the voice of conscience, the demands of reality and
the dictates of religion came as a last resort when his " libido striv-
ing'^ had worn itself out in every other path open to his peculiar
nature.
Were we to judge him by his poem, and see him the strange,
piteous, futile thing finally overtaken by the following feet of the
Hound of Heaven, utterly overcome but surprised to find that his
gloom, after all, is but " the shade of His hand, outstretched caress-
ingly," we might expect a complete transformation, a conversion
similar perhaps to that of St. Augustine. But no, Francis Thomp-
son, though much changed, was no saint. The conflict between the
libido and the spiritual ideal, though terminated in a religious sub-
limation, was not settled so satisfactorily that the ideal of duty
triumphed wholly and forever afterwards.
In theiife and poems we have just studied we see exemplified the
strife between pleasure and reality which psychoanalysts term the
conflict. The concept, however, is as old as human experience.
Thus St. Paul wrote : " I see another law in my members, fighting
against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin "
(Rom. VII, 23). Thus also Kant describes the conflict as the
struggle between the sensory self of childhood and the intellectual
self that is developed by the ideal of duty and the insistence of the
categorical imperative. But only in recent times have the uncon-
scious elements in the conflict been duly appreciated and the rela-
tion of the conflict to the neuroses detected.
Sigmund Freud gave clear expression to these ideas in 191 1 in
an article entitled Formulierung ilber die swei Prinsipien des psychi-
schen Geschehens}^
^' Cf, Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschun-
gen, III, pp. 1-8.
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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 36I
In this article he maintains that the two principles which govern
all mental phenomena are the pleasure-pain and the reality prin-
ciples. Of these the most primitive is the pleasure-pain principle.
The infant is governed solely by this primitive driving force. By
gestures or cries he makes known his wants, and they are no sooner
made known than a tender mother or attentive nurse tries to hush
the crying and gfive the child the little pleasure that it seeks. Thus
it seems to the child that it only has to wish in order to have its
wants satisfied. But as life goes on it learns by one experience
after another that wishes do not always come true — ^that it may
desire and desire and desire again and still the much sought indul-
gence is not indulged. It is then face to face with reality. Before,
the child had lived its life of whims and fancies all alone to itself.
It wakens at last to the startling and bitter truth that its fancies may
be unrealized, that there is a world of dreams and a world of reality
and that the two stand over against each other in irreconcilable
conflict.
This realization forces a process of adaptation to the world as
it is, a process in which the pleasure-pain principle commences to
yield to the reality principle. Two selves commence to be built up —
the Ego of Pleasure and the Ego of Reality. The pleasure-ego
knows nothing but wishing and the real-ego looks only at utility.
"Bernard Shaw," says Freud, "has well expressed the advantage
that the Ego of Reality has over against the Ego of Pleasure : ' to
be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding
in the direction of least resistance.' "*•
If one is to shield himself from harm he must often give up the
present pleasure for a future advantage, and here arises the strife —
and here is the origin of the conflict. The primitive unconscious
strivings of the Ego of Pleasure demand the present pleasure without
r^^rd to consequences. The conscious demands of the Ego of
Reality with its insight into the future urge the renunciation of a
present gain to ward off a future calamity.
When the pleasure-pain principle cannot attain its end, because it
is blocked and thwarted by the barriers and counter trends of the
real world, it seeks an outlet in the world of phantasy — ^in plays and
day dreams and vain imaginings.
When the world of reality is all too harsh and dreadful, and the
constitution of the individual is unequal to the burdens thrown upon
it, the reaction is extreme, and we have the abnormal behavior of
the neurotic.
^* Cf. Man and Superman — ^A Comedy and a Philosophy, L c., p. 5.
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362 THOMAS VE&NER MOORB
The division Freud makes between the pleasure-pain and the
reality principle is complete — if we understand by reality all that
is opposed to the blind seeking of satisfaction. When, however, we
commence to study the checks upon the pleasure-pain principle we
find that Freud has not brought everything to light.
As the individual's life develops he often finds that the fulfil-
ment of his wishes is blocked by objective reality, because that
which is hie et nunc desired is not hie et nune available. Again, a
wish is left unfulfilled because one has learned by experience or
hearsay that it is bound up with a future evil. All this Freud recog-
nizes, but here he stops. Now, over and above the restrictions he
points out — the limitations namely of impossibility and of expedi-
ency — ^is the restriction of the "ought." In many individuals the
limitations imposed by a sense of duty are far greater and more
insistent than those demanded by pure expediency and sheer im-
possibility. The conscience principle, therefore, is one that should
be recognized and it might be conveniently distinguished from the
reality principle as the subjective is from the objective.
In the concept of the conflict, the conscience principle is of
supreme importance. For it often happens that there is no real con-
flict between desire and its mere physical fulfilment, or between de-
sire and one's sense of expediency, but mainly and above all between
desire and the sense of duty.
This is the conflict that we see reflected in the Hound of Heaven.
The soul fears that if it stops and listens to the voice of conscience
it must renounce all its desires and therefore it flies. In this flight it
is not merely doing what is inexpedient and foolish— or whining be-
cause what it wants cannot be had — ^but it is flying from the voice
of God, the Designer Infinite, to Whom the soul is bound by ties
of love.
It is the libido that drives it on whether the soul is " shot precipi-
tated adown Titanic Glooms of chasmed fears" or "troubles the
the golden gateway of the stars, smiting for shelter on their clanged
bars." While the libido drives, conscience calls and no matter where
the libido may go, conscience always follows after. It is a human
force divinized by union with the Deity. Hence, the ideals of duty
and the apparent accidents of life concur to block the lower outlets
for the libido, and direct it from one channel to another, until it
arrives at a religious sublimation and conscience triumphs in the
conquest of libido.
True it is that no matter what is sought, there is one common ele-
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THE HOUND OP HEAVEN 363
ment in the seeking ; whether in the depths of its degradation or in
the height of its sublimation, the mind is ever aiming consciously,
or unconsciously, at one and the same thing. With the Freudians,
this is some aspect of the sexual. But Francis Thompson, whose
mind was leavened by Thomistic traditions, regards this one thing
as the good — the true good, the one supreme good, the Personal
Ideal of the conscience principle. What man really desires is the
True and Perfect Good, that which alone can fully satisfy the
heart. The Infinite Good is, after all, the driving force of human
nature. One seeks and seeks again and finds not till desire gives
place to will and libido is overcome by conscience.
Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He whom thou seekestl
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.
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A LACE CREATION REVEALING AN INCEST FANTASY
By Abxah B. Evarts, M.D.
ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN, ST. ELIZABETH'S HOSPITAL
The necessity for self-expression has always been one of the
paramount elements in the psyche of the individual. In proportion
to his ability to express that which animates him, does he develop.
In proportion to the completeness with which his self-expression is
also the expression of the self of others, is he of value to society.
Hence, we find the man whose self contains the correlation and
direction of many diverse lines of energy developing immense con-
structive or manufacturing businesses. Two instances of this stand
out preeminently: Henry Ford, to whom the automobile industry
owes so much, and James Hill, that wonderful man who developed
our great Northwest. There is also the man whose mechanical
genius is urging him forward, to find self-expression in many inven-
tions; Thomas Edison, Marconi, the Wright Brothers: tiie man
whose ideal of beauty urges him to construction with perfectly bal-
anced lines ; the great architects and builders : the man with marked
administrative ability : as well as the craftsman, who merely loves to
make the same thing over and over in constantly increasing per-
fection. Raphael's eflForts at self-expression produced those mar-
velous canvases. The angel which beckoned Michael Angelo from
the block of marble was his self struggling for expression. Bee-
thoven and Mozart but wrote their own souls. The neat and or-
derly woman finds self-expression in the keeping of an immaculate
house, a family properly fed and cared for in all ways, children led
lovingly through the difficult mazes of childhood and adolescence.
To the great majority of women, needle^work is imperative.
One, who has a constructive mind, finds her self-expression in the
designing and making of garments ; another, who has the artificer's
delight in exquisite craftsmanship, can only express herself by the
tiniest and daintiest of stitches. She will sew for the pure delight
of sewing, and turns by choice to the making of fine embroidery
and laces.
The history of lace-making is most interesting. It developed
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LACE CBEATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 365
almost entirely in Europe. Women had lost their primitive freedom,
and were relieved of their agricultural pursuits. They were turning
more and more to their homes, to the exclusion of all else, or to the
delights of religion. Many were mistresses of large establishments
with many waiting women, and many were in the nunneries. The
making of lace gave them opportunity for expression. The nuns,
especially, made their work to glorify God, and many exquisite pieces
are still in existence which have been used in the churches. Their
patterns were usually a weaving of the synibols of the church, or
representations of the saints in some attitude of ecstasy or devotion.
From the earliest life of mankind has this necessity for self-
expression been present. It furnished the race with their ideals, as
distinct from the necessities of food and shelter. Line drawings
were probably their first attempt, as it is yet the first attempt of the
child, and there is a similarity, amounting in many instances to iden-
tity, between the early drawings of the race, and the crude men,
dogs, cows, etc., which the child produces. Attempts at round rep-
resentation resulted in the crudest of images from clay, wood, or
metal, not far removed in appearance from our mud-pie days.
Most of us find our expression along well-recognized and useful
lines, because of the demands of society, and also, because of the
censor of consciousness. That small class of individuals who are
unable to accede to the demands of society, and are finally segre-
gated in institutions for the insane, for whom the censor is often
tricked or overwhelmed, give expression to their unconscious with
a freedom and naivete that is most enlightening. Words, often
obscene and vulgar words, are heard on all sides. Frequent de-
struction of property or clothing is the recourse of others. While
many work very well, others are unable to hold themselves to any
definite task. These, among the women, most often turn to their
needle and thread. They decorate their clothing with embroidery,
which is often designed entirely by the patient and worked without a
pattern. One woman in St. Elizabeth's Hospital is dressed almost
entirely in lace of her own manufacture. One patient covers bits of
muslin almost solidly with her embroidery, then wears them as head-
dresses, shawls, or aprons. Another has made a con^lete dress
and hat from white muslin covered with brilliant red and blue em-
broideries of lines and tracings, flowers, and even human figures.
Most often this is very primitive, bearing a strong resemblance to
the early productions of the race. Occasionally a piece of work has
very great analytical possibilities. Such is the piece of needle-point
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366 AKRAH B. EVAKTS
which is the subject of this study. Before we can learn much from
it» however, we should know something of the woman who made it
She was bom in Virginia in 1863, eighth child in a family of
nine. Her father, a captain in the G)nf ederate Army, was a periodic
drunkard, and was described as being very mean and cruel when
drunk. Her mother died of tuberculosis before she can remember.
An older sister took charge of the family, and life went on normally.
Virginia, as we shall call her, received a good common-school edu-
cation, and was considered very bright. Her sister married and
established her own home, leaving Virginia to manage her father's
household. After a longer or shorter time, the sister, Mrs. Brown,
took Virginia to her home. She was very kindly treated by her
brother-in-law, Edward Brown. She went to school again a short
time, but soon learned dressmaking, and b^an to support herself.
She loved this work : it never seemed like work to her, but always
pleasure. Indeed, she says she cannot remember when she learned
to sew, it seemed as if she always knew how. During her wage-
earning career she became addicted to morphine, and also became
the mistress of several men. In 1901, she had her first attack of
mental disease. She was then greatly depressed and full of self-
accusatory ideas ; said she had committed a terrible crime, had taken
things which did not belong to her, and was accused of killing some
one. She was also quite anxious, cried a great deal, and picked at
her nails. She went through a fantasy pr^nancy, even getting all
of her baby clothes ready. She became better, when she would have
periods of mild excitement. Her favorite amusement or method
of amusing others, perhaps, at this time, was to imitate the conduct
of a dnmken man. She recovered, became energetic and cheerful,
and was allowed the privilege of sewing for the employees of the
hospital until she had accumulated sufficient funds to help her be-
come reestablished, when she was discharged, after thirteen months'
treatment. She again took up her work as dressmaker, and had a
small apartment. She never married. She gradually returned to
her former habits of living, and has told us that she drank and lived
at times in houses of prostitution. Her sisters have denied this,
as they believed all of her self-accusatory ideas to be delusional.
All went well, however, until the winter of 1910-11, when she again
became depressed, restless, nervous and sleepless, sometimes talk-
ative and sometimes lacrimose, and it was necessary to return her to
St. Elizabeth's. She was then passing through the menopause.
Her physical examination revealed only the presence of syphilis, an
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 367
old infection, and that the entroitus vaginae was marital. Mentally,
she was depressed and retarded, timid, apprehensive, and anxious,
confused and disoriented. She saw shadows of things flying a^bout
her and heard the voice of her dead brother calling to her. She felt
electricity and thought " some one was doing tricks on bier." Her
memory was rather dilapidated, and her general intelligence was
also poor. For the first two months she remained depressed. A
mistaJcen identity of persons began to annoy her. During the third
month she became excited, profane, obscene in language, untidy, de-
structive, breaking flower pots, dishes, chairs and tables, and even
assaulted the other patients. She became oriented about this time.
This phase lasted a little less than a month, when she was again
dull, apprehensive and lacrimose. She emerged from this to become
fairly comfortable. She became able to work with fair efficiency
about the ward, and later, in the hospital sewing room. She re-
mained distrustful of every one, was easily irritated, and still had
outbursts of weeping when she bemoaned the fact that she had no
home, and no friends. She gradually settled into a chronic state,
and has now for nearly six years showed recurrent cycles of mild
excitement, with some destructiveness and obscenity, and a dullness
and indiflFerence which were deadening. She has grown more de-
teriorated, the unconscious is allowed freer and freer expression, and
she has lost her ability to do acceptable work. Self-expression,
however, has remained imperative, and what more natural than that
she should use the implements of her old trade. One year she
made herself a rag doll, with which she spent many happy hours.
Later, she developed the habit of raveling her hose, and using the
thread so obtained to make lace for her clothing, and to embroider
ordinary designs upon them; this; in her periods of comparative
peace. During the spring of 191 7, when she began her embroidery
and lace-making, her nurse gave her some bits of old white cotton.
These she raveled, and with the threads made the piece of needle-
point which is pictured. She was not disturbed while making this.
Unfortunately soon after its completion, she entered her period of
dullness, and all attempts at learning its meaning had to be post-
poned. About six months later she was bright, accessible, and eager
to talk. When she was shown her piece of lace, she hailed it with
delight and was quite happy to explain it.
Analysis revealed much of interest contributory to the needle-
point, but not directly told there, and it will probably be best to go
over that first. As already said, Virginia showed considerable dilapi-
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368 AKRAH B. BVARTS
dation from the first. It seems that the only things left in her mind
are those bearing directly upon her complex. She, who was next
to the youngest in a large family, which may be called the ordinary
American family, must have received much care and attention from
her older brothers and sisters. Yet, she has no recall for any such
happy episodes. Her mother's image has become very faint, if
indeed it was ever very strong. She casually spoke of never re-
membering her mother; she said she could not remember of there
ever being a mother in the house, no one was ever called Mrs. Hall,
and she never heard her father speak of any one who might have
been his wife. Although she would tell, when questioned, that her
eldest sister had taken her mother's place, her spontaneous produc-
tions concerning her always were of events after the sister's mar-
riage and removal from their home. Her other brothers and sisters
never appeared in any of her memories, excepting one brother, whom
she said shared the bed with herself and her father. Her father,
however, becomes of enormous importance. Indeed, her world
seemed made only of herself and her father. Yet, it was most
difficult for her to call him father. She usually referred to him as
" Mr. Hall," " old Jim Hall," " the man I used to Uve with who said
he was my father," ** the first man I ever slept with," or " that old
man down in Virginia." She would not admit any filial affection
for him. Indeed she usually put her thought in the negative form ;
** well, I don't know as I disliked him so much." She said he was
always cursing and swearing, and was known as a big drunk. There
were many stories of the way he used to beat her. These were all
told with a strong sadistic-masochistic relish, and seemed to loom
large to her in the retrospective. They were probably but the efforts
of a misguided man to bring up his motherless baby girl. Two of
these stories are illustrative of all. One Christmas she peeped to
see who was filling her stockings, and found her father so engaged.
He became terribly angry, pulled her out of bed, and beat her with a
strap until the blood came. One night she wet the bed. Again he
became terribly angry, pulled her out of bed, removed her clothing,
and beat her with a strap until the blood came. The strong sexual
meaning of such episodes as this is taught us by Freud in his work.
Another large part of her memories are concerned with living
in the bam. For some reason not known to the child, the house
was sold and the family lived in the bam, which was made into a
suitable dwelling place for them. She was able to fumish it only
with a table, two or three old chairs, and a bed, and there never
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 369
seemed to be any one living there but herself and her father. It
remained a bam to her mind ; it never became softened to a home
by the fact that it was the dwelling place of the family. The most
of her fantasies were placed there. She thought she remembered
of being locked in a burning closet, when some man released her.
Once she was locked upstairs when " everjrthing " was burning,
and a man released her. It was here that she was her father's
housekeeper. The sexual value of this is over-determined. The
bam itself, because it is the home of the familiar domestic animals
and the place of their mating, is a strong sexual symbol, and she has
reinforced it by the two fantasies of being locked in a buming
room, to be released by a man (her father). This living in the
bam was to her an actual stepping down to lower levels, which has
become symbolic of her own wrecked life. The voices now say of
her, "Oh, she just lived in a barn all of her life."
During her early childhood she occupied her father's bed, and
she insisted that she slept with him until she was about thirteen
years old. The two stories given of his beating her occurred when
she was his bed fellow. There is no way of checking this up with
the facts now, but nothing could be truer to her own mind, or of
greater influence over her life. The more likely thing, again to
return to probabilities, is that this is the only way her father could
care for her at night when she was a baby and a tiny girl ; that it
became very firmly fixed in her mind and of a very profound sexual
significance to her, so that now she carries the memory over to the
time when she was thirteen, that is, to the beginning of adolescence
and the awakening of her sexual instincts. The censor of con-
sciousness will not allow such a thought to quite overstep the danger
line, or to incur the disapprobation of society, by her remaining in
her father's bed after that time.
Nearly all the incidents of her childhood, told of by Virginia,
occurred when she " was about thirteen." It seemed as if she placed
them all where she would be able to appreciate them fully, and yet
could not be held responsible.
Only one memory was pleasant. She and her father were in the
habit of taking their dinner into the woods during the spring and
summer, and eating picnic fashion. This they both very thoroughly
enjoyed. Always after dinner her father would lie down with his
head in her lap, and go to sleep while she combed his hair. This is
replete with symbolism. Among the happiest moments of childhood
are the family picnics, when the family, with no one else, that is,
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370 AKRAH B. EVASTS
with no one alien to their community of thought and experience,
leave society with its constant demands and repressions, go into the
woods, where, with the surroundings of primitive man, they can
revert for a few hours to an earlier period of their phylum. The
rest and refreshment so obtained is in proportion to the complete-
ness of the return. Virginia even reproduced the primitive custom
of holding her lord's head in her lap while he slept. In this con-
nection, we remember that Delilah held the head of Samson in her
lap and lulled him to sleep. The hair of the head often represents
the individual. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, teaches that it has a
large place in early ritual ; it was one of the earliest substitutes for
human sacrifice. Its manner of dressing contained much signifi-
cance. The Nazarites and many other early priesthoods would never
let it be cut ; a girl would let it be known whether she were maid or
matron by its arrangement, and the custom of short hair for men
and long hair for women is so deeply ingrained that today a long-
haired man will practically always be found to be effeminate, and
a short-haired woman, masculine. In combing her father's hair,
Virginia put him into a relation of dependence upon, and pleasure-
seeking toward her, which was very archaic, and toward which
there was no taboo. Hence, this memory has remained to her dilapi-
dated mind, and is freighted full of the pleasure of her life with him,
which she cannot admit in any other instance.
Her sister, Mrs. Brown, finally took Virginia to her home.
This, again, Virginia assigns to *'the time when she was about
thirteen," that is, at the time of her sexual awakening. She never
saw her father again, although she heard from him, and helped
support him after she became a wage-earner. He disappeared from
her life, and died many years later. Yet, in another way, he has
never disappeared from her life, and she now says that she does
not believe he is dead, anyway. Her brother-in-law, Edward, be-
came her father's surrogate. This love was not so impossible to her
unconscious, and she now freely and frequently says that Edward
Brown was the first man she ever loved. The fact that he was her
sister's husband presented no problem which could compare with
that of her incestuous regard for her father, so the censor was
tricked to pass the masquerade. In the years to follow, this love
was replaced by another, and again by another, until there were at
least three men, and probably four, for whom she entertained so
high a regard that they are still present among her dilapidated mem-
ories. One of these was a business man, one a newspaper writer of
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LACE CSEATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 371
some success, and one a government worker. While her memory
of each one is distinct, and there is no tendency to confuse them,
yet there is a strong tendency to fuse them together into one image,
her father. The last one has now the most clearly defined per-
sonality to her, yet she says of him, as she does of the others, that
he looked like Mr. Hall ; she knew him as long as she had known Mr.
Hall ; that she sometimes thought he must be the first man she ever
slept with. The ability to see multiple personalities in any one with
whom she is in contact is very prominent. While she knows, beyond
question, the real individual, the real individual is never separated
from several others whom she has known in the years gone by.
Her nurses are themselves, and Mrs. Brown. The plunders, elec-
tricians, carpenters, etc., of the hospital, although recognized by her
in their true characters, are also her former paramours, sometimes one
man carrying several such superimposed personalities. But they
are all, always, and at all times, " the old, old man down in Virginia.''
Her dreams are also full of interest. The hopelessness of her
' state of mind is shown in this one : She wanted a drink of water,
but could not get out of the door to get it. The drink of water
typified everything that was restful and refreshing, everything that
was "clean, oh, so clean 1" and was like being in heaven. The
door out of which she could not get called forth this sentence:
"The doors of hell and heaven shall be barred against two who
have sinned against Almighty God." Although she called the
sin against Almighty God rape, knowledge of her fantasies, and
also, the piece of lace, leads one to believe that it is much more
serious, incest. Another dream she told as follows : " I thought I
went by houses and houses, oh, so many of them, and I went up
steps, and I went down steps, and I looked in the houses. And
there were three beads, oh, such beautiful gold beads lying on the
ground. And I picked up one, and it was all right ; and I picked up
another, and it was all right ; and I picked up the third bead, and
I began going down, and going down, and going down. Oh, it was
just awful, and I was so scared. And the water rushed up and cov-
ered me, and I was so scared. And I called to a man who was going
by, and he did not pay any attention."
Although every word of this dream is rich, the greatest interest
begins with the third bead. Three and bead both have their ordinary
symbolism; they stand for the male. The third bead is "the
highest in the country, the President." It also " had the most treach-
ery in it, and was the sin committed against Almighty God," i. e..
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372 AULAH B. BVAKTS
the sin of incest. The going down, and going down, was a continual
slipping backward "because she could not hold herself up/' To
water, she promptly associated the story of Nicodemus, the young
man who came to Jesus, by night, and was told that he must be
bom again, but her association consisted, first, of Nicodemus's
answer to Jesus, ** can a man enter the second time into his noother's
womb to be born ? '' The man who paid no attention to her calls,
was each one of her lovers, and ako, " the old, old man down in
Virginia.*' Thus, in her dream, she lived again her losing struggle
against the curse of the third bead, the result of which would be a
return to the intra-uterine existence, while her father was oblivious
of her danger.
This piece of lace is made from the raveled threads of old soft
white muslin, some of the larger figures being fashioned from bits
of the cloth, stuffed with scraps of the same material, and the sur-
face carefully darned into shape with ravelings, or, in some instances,
with sewing thread. The smaller figures are darned flat, and the
connecting lace mesh is made of the button-hole stitch worked over
loops of thread. When it was completed, it was set by the same
stitch within the hem of an old handkerchief, which was also button-
holed, and the finish of button-holed loops put around the outside.
In looking at this, we see it is divided unevenly into an upper and
a lower portion, the upper portion again being divided into a right
and a left half. That quadrant, which consists of the flat darned
figures, was the portion upon which she began to work, and of all
the figures, No. i was the first one made. This she says is the
figure of St. Joseph, "who will get you a husband if you pray to
him for one." This belief, that St. Joseph will provide husbands
for those who wish them, is quite widespread, and it is by no means
uncommon for adolescent girls to carry just such a little shapeless
image as this about with them, more in a spirit of fun and uncon-
scious wish fulfillment, than in deep spirit of belief. I am unable to
find any authority for this office which has been bestowed upon St
Joseph. It is probably an attribute which has been added to his
other characteristics, because of the account of his marriage to
Mary, as given in the apocryphal writings. When forty years old,
Joseph had married Melcha. To them were bom six children.
After forty-nine years, Melcha died. A year later, the priests an-
nounced throughout Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of
Judah a respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve or fourteen
years old. Joseph, being then ninety years old, went up to Jerusa-
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW. VOL. 5. PLATE I.
I. St. Joseph and St. Michael. 2. Little Nannie Red Nose and Little
Boy Blue. 3. Lucy. Crazy Jane. 4. The Children of the Abbey. 5. Virgin
Mary. 6. Mr. Gibson. 7. The Woman Picking up Apples. 8. Skeleton. J. J
Jack and Jill. S S. Mr. and Mrs. Hub Smith.
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THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW. VOL. 5. PLATE II.
I. St. Joseph and St. Michael. 2. Little Nannie Red Nose and Little
Boy Blue. 3. Lucy. Crazy Jane. 4. The Children of the Abbey. 5. Virgin
Mary. 6. Mr. Gibson. 7. The Woman Picking up Apples. 8. Skeleton. J. J.
Jack and Jill. S. S. Mr. and Mrs. Hub Smith.
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 373
lem among the candidates, and a miracle manifested to the priests
that he was the choice of God. Two years later, the Annunciaticm
took place. What more natural then, than that the benevolent old
man who, as though by a miracle, had provided the most loved of
young girls with a husband, should be besought to use his influence
for others.
True to her ability to see many personalities in one, this figure
is also St. Michael. Now St. Michael is one of the most important
angels. His name, which means '* Who is like God ! ", was the war
cry of the good angels in the battle fought in Heaven against Satan
and his followers. He is mentioned by name four times in the
Bible. " Lo — Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me "
(Dan. 10-13). " And at that time shall Michael stand up, the prince
which standeth for the children of thy people " (Dan. 12-1). " And
there was war in Heaven : Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon ; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not,
neither was their place found any more in Heaven" (Rev. 12-7).
" Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil, he
disputed about the body of Moses" (Jud. 9). He is supposed to
guard the body of Moses, and by his good guardianship, to have
saved the Israelites from the sin of hero worship. He also guards
the body of Eve. He is believed to have been the angel who kept
the Garden of Eden after the expulsion of our first parents; the
angel through whom God published the decalogue given to his
chosen people; the angel which stood in the way against Balaam;
and the angel who routed the army of Sennacherib. Christian tra"
dition gives him four offices: (i) To fight against Satan. (2) To
rescue the souls of the faithful from the power of the devil. (3)
To be the champion of God's people. (4) To call away from
earth and bring men's souls to Judgment. To this was added, in
later years, the care of the sick. In art, he is usually represented
as an angelic warrior, fully armed with helmet, sword, and shield,
standing on the dragon, whom he sometimes pierces with a lance.
Those who saw Marie Odile will remember the big painting of St
Michael with the flaming, uplifted sword, which hung in the big
convent hall, and the fancies of the innocent young girl concerning it.
So Virginia begins her piece of work with an inarticulate prayer
to St. Joseph for a husband, and to St. Michael for his aid in her
fight against the dragon, which we have already learned is " the old,
old man in Virginia."
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374 AKRAH B. BVASTS
Number 2 is Little Nannie Red Nose, and Virginia applied to
her the old Mother Goose riddle :
Little Nannie Red Nose,
The longer she stands,
The shorter she grows.
The bit of needlework attached to her face she says is a trumpet she
is blowing ; this would make this figure also :
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn,
The cow's in the meadow,
The sheep in the com.
Although, she has made this a female figure, there is nothing in-
congruous to her in giving it another personality, which is male.
Indeed, this she has done very often in all of her productions. Cer-
tain of the patients, with whom she is in contact, carry the added
personality of men, and these are not especially the masculine type
of women either. To this figure she has never given any character
from real life, hence we must think it represents what might be called
the Mother Goose phase of her own development.
NunAer 3, on the contrary, always has the name and attributes
of people she has known. It is Lucy, Crazy Jane, and two big fat
negroes, a woman and a man, who " never wore a stitch of clothes.*'
These people were all vaguely described, and this figure probably rep-
resents a growth beyond the phase of Little Nannie Red Nose, where
reality is beginning to be forced upon her attention, but where there
is still considerable confusion. The negroes, who never wore
clothing, would indicate that this figure holds the expression of her
childish inquisitiveness and peeping tendencies. The right hand of
this figure is seen to be held in a position covering the sexual organs,
but Virginia naively said : " You know they are there just the same."
Since this is the only figure in which there has been the slightest
attempt to cover these organs, we must conclude that this is done
for reasons other than modesty, or that it holds the expression of
her childish habit of masturbation.
This is amplified in the two figures which are numbered 4. Vir-
ginia says these are the Children of the Abbey, by which she means
a "whole race of little people," which she sometimes called the Jews.
These two figures are as nearly alike as she could make them ; they
possess no individual characteristics, but are very good general
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 375
types. Now the "Children of the Abbey" is a novel of English
life of perhaps a century ago, the children being an orphaned brother
and sister of the well-to-do class, for whom the course of true love
did not run smooth, but who finally married happily. Persistent
questioning failed to reveal any knowledge of this bodk, exx:ept its
title, which the patient has plagiarized, so to speak, and applied to
her race of little people. We know that the mothering of multitudes
'of children, especially if they be little, is a masturbation fantasy
among women. In this connection, the patient said that she had
created all the people in the world, that the world was not finished
yet, and she had to complete it. She is also an habitual masturbator.
Number 5 is the Virgin Mary. This is a slender girlish figure
whose sexual organs are so small that they cannot be differentiated
from the other stitches composing the body, although Virginia re-
peatedly pointed them out, and could not understand that no one
else could see them. She said they had to be small because she was
a virgin. The wonder of Mary, the mother of Jesus, had a g^eat
appeal for this patient. She often spoke of her purity. This is
probably the expression of her early religious yearnings. Perhaps,
also, she recognized in the very great difference in age between Mary
and Joseph a similarity to the relations of herself and her father,
Mary's attachment being legitimate, and her own taboo. She is
peculiarly uninformed of religion, the church or the Bible, yet she
quotes, albeit incorrectly, from the Scriptures, rather freely, some-
times with a startling meaning. For instance, "Let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth " means to her, that the right
hand is engaged in masturbation, and should keep the left in ig-
norance.
Number 6 is one of her early paramours, Mr. Gibson, and also,
contains all of the others. Note the flaring head-dress she has
given him, thus distinguishing him from all the others in this group.
She has also made a very realistic snake, trailing across the lace
work, and whispering to Mr. Gibson. Snake means to her man,
the seducer, and the pleasure giver. The wide use and general ap-
plicability of the symbolism of the serpent has been well worked out
by Dr. Hassall. I would interpret this group as being the awaken-
ing of her desire for the normal life of woman, pictured by one of
her childhood lovers, Mr. Gibson.
Number 7 is The Woman Picking Up Apples. Later on, she
referred continually to The Woman, This One Woman, The Only
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376 AUtAH B. SVAKTS
Woman Who Ever Was, The First Woman, meaning herself.
Therefore, we may have no hesitation in deciding that this woman
is also herself. Apples have a constant strong sexual significance
to her, meaning the testicles. The Woman Picking Up Apples,
therefore, is herself, searching for her mate. You will notice that
The Woman is carrying the apples in her lap.
Number 8 is a skeleton. This hung in the home of an unde of
hers, who was a doctor. Nothing more would she tell about it
But we know that uncle is virtually interchangeable with father, and
doctor, especially a country doctor, is also a father substitute. So
the skeleton from her uncle's home must be the skeleton of her at-
tachment to her father, of which she is unable to rid herself,
although she is trying to emancipate herself, and is seeking the op-
portunity to fulfil her biological destiny.
This quadrant portrays a resume, so to speak, of her develop-
ment through the fantasies of early childhood, her narcissistic
period, and adolescent awakening, with the final unconscious domi-
nance of the skeleton. In a way, it reminds us of the preliminary
search of her dream, " I went by houses and houses, and I went
up steps and I went down steps.''
There is now a change in the size of her figures. There is also
a definite pairing off. The next two which she made are Jack and
Jill, marked J. These figures are still made of darning stitches en-
tirely, although there is a shaping and rounding of the bodies, and
definite features are given to the faces. They both have short
tightly curled hair, and both have decorative garters tied below the
knee. This method of decoration is seen among many primitive
tribes. A garter presented by a ruling sovereign was a mark of dis-
tinction and royal favor, highly prized during the feudal ages. It
is often reproduced by the insane, who show an archaic tendency.
It had no other meaning than this to Virginia. Jill is also given a
distinctive head-dress and a lace dress. The pail which they carried
up the hill is swinging through a pulley (made from the rim of a
button) above Jack's head. Jack and Jill have each a hand on the
rope, and are in the act of lowering the pail for water. They are
surrounded by a bower of roses, which Virginia says are running
over the cottage where they live. Flowers, especially roses, mean
home to her. The rose is recognized in poetry and art as the
flower of love. Perched on one of these roses is what Virginia
calls a bee, in the act of sucking honey. The fact that bees aid in
the poUinization of flowers is unknown to our patient, yet they have
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 377
a strong sexual significance for her just the same, because of the
fact that they sting. Jack is also Samson, '' the greatest man who
ever lived, except the Christ." Jill is also Queen Victoria, and we
may add, the greatest woman who ever lived. Besides, Jack and
JiU are really generic terms for man and woman. These two may
be considered a fantasy, such as girls are prone to indulge in, of a
cottage built for two, with Jack, an ideal, who is everything that is
strong, manly and dependable, and Jill (herself), who is ever3rthing
that is sweet, womanly and desirable, happily engaged together in
homely household tasks, with the roses of pleasure and the bees of
pain about them.
The next two figures, marked S, are made from pieces of muslin
like a rag doll, and stuffed with scraps, the outside being covered
with parallel darning stitches. These, Virginia calls Mr. and Mrs.
Hub Smith. It will be noticed that they are grosser and more ma-
terial than Jack and Jill, as if her fancies are losing their poetry and
becoming more sordid. What looks like a bower of roses around
them Virginia tells me is, in reality, a grape-vine, and that Mr. and
Mrs. Hub Smith are standing together in a grape-vine swing. She
even says that Mr. Hub Smith wrote a song called " Swinging in
the Grape- Vine Swing." The grape-vine is a far coarser symbol of
love than the roses, adding the element of licentiousness. It is the
emblem of Bacchus, rather than of Venus. Mr. Hub Smith holds
an umbrella over their heads as a sign that " they are together under
God's creation," that is, fulfilling their biological destiny. The um-
brella is surmounted by an unusually large and vigorous bee, and
there is a smaller one upon the grape-vine. Mrs. Hub Smith is
wearing a bracelet upon the left arm, made from the rim of a pearl
button. A bracelet means the marital relation to Virginia, and Mrs.
Hub Smith is wearing it as a sign that the bans have been pub-
lished. Fan is also a symbol of the marital relation, and Mrs. Hub
Smith is carrying it in that especial position to signify her passion.
Another snake is wriggling across the lace work from underneath
Jill's feet, and is whispering into the ear of Mr. Hub Smith. This
would indicate a very close relationship between Mr. Hub Smith
and Mr. Gibson, but while Mr. Gibson is evidently a youth, Mr.
Hub Smith is a mature man, and judging from his very great inti-
macy with the grape-vine, must be her father, although this could
not be substantiated by Virginia. She would only quote: ''Oh,
Death, where is thy sting, oh, grave, where is thy Victory," and
where indeed is the victory of the grave to one who lives in a world
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378 AUtAH B. EVAKTS
of dreams. In talking of Mrs. Htrt> Smith, she referred to her as
the only woman who ever was in the world, a phrase which she
most often applied to herself. In these two figures, then, we find
a fairly definite picture of herself and her father, although they are
pretty well overlaid with Mr. and Mrs. Hub Smith. Again, there
is a marked parallel to her dream, " And I picked up the first bead,
and it was all right ; and I picked up the second bead, and it was all
right."
The smaller half of this piece of lace contains three figures of
heroic size, and a cross, and are very intimately connected. The
figure beside the cross is The One Woman, The First Woman That
Ever Was, The Only Woman, The Virgin, the Magdalene, which
our patient indicated by giving her long flowing hair. She said
that a virgin could easily be a Magdalene because of her thoughts.
The One Woman has also been given rather lacy inefficient wings,
because she is an angel. But the most frequent name applied to
her is The Woman Who Has SuflFered All There Is In The World
To Suffer Because She Wanted The Christ for a Husband. The
cross beside which she stands indicates this. For the sake of brev-
ity, we will call her The Woman, but with the meaning of Vir-
ginia's complete sentence. In her left hand. The Woman carries
a bunch of flowers ; in her right is a bee ; at her feet is a terrapin.
By all of these means, Virginia tried to express the greatness of
this woman's passion for the Christ. At the end of the string of
beads is a pearl ring. Our patient says that pearls are tears.
They were never intended for everybody, but were made by God
Almighty in memory of the Christ to whom The Woman was so
much devoted. There is also a pearl ring upon the cross, to signify
the love The Woman bore the Christ. It is rather significant that
this ring is broken. Probably this element of tears in the pearls is
also present in Mrs. Hub Smith's bracelet, in the pulley through
which the rope of Jack and Jill's pail plays, and in the button on Mr.
Hall's Masonic head-dress. The breasts of The Woman are large
and prominent. Her right breast is being sucked by a snake, which
coils away from the cross. Virginia said that God Almighty would
not let The Woman have the Christ for a husband, so she had to
be a virgin, but she could still have the sensations of marrying Him
in her breasts. And that was why she attached the serpent as she
did. The cross is surmounted by the dove of peace, which has been
out over the face of the waters and returned with an olive branch in
his mouth. The dove represents innocence, and also, "people who
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LACE CREATION REVEALING INCEST FANTASY 379
really know/' like the Virgin Mary, who was essentially innocent,
and yet, had become a mother. The dove of peace, settling upon
the cross, foreshadows the development of the next figure. " After
The Woman had suffered all she could possibly suffer as a punish-
ment for having committed all the sin in the world, in that she
wanted the Highest Man, or the Qirist, for a husband, then there
was a crowning, and they left her alone after that."
The next figure, then, is but another phase of The Woman.
Virginia usually calls her the Other Woman, sometimes the Second
Woman. She is older, less attractive, with shrunken trunk and hips,
and she is clothed in a dress of lace. Her hair, no longer loose and
flowing, to indicate that she is no longer the Virgin, or the Mag-
dalene, is braided. The coronet with which the crowning was done
is made from bits of twisted wire, and in her right hand, she is car-
rying a ball, another symbol of the male.
The man next to her Virginia dismissed rather briefly from the
discussion, saying only that he was Mr. Hall, and that he was the
one man, as she was the one woman. He is also a Mason, as indi-
cated by his cap and long sweeping ostrich plume (made most
cleverly from raveled strips of muslin). In his left hand Vir-
ginia has put a trumpet, another symbol of the phallus, yet symbols
were not entirely adequate ; and our patient did not neglect to make
his sexual organs large and prominent, nor to so arrange his lace
trousers that they were emphasized rather than concealed. Yet, you
will notice that her knowledge of the anatomy of the parts is in-
correct. Between the two figures is another terrapin. The One
Woman and the One Man are locking arms, thus showing a
greater intimacy than is enjoyed by the other figures. Virginia
says the Other Woman has finally been allowed to marry this
man, and as a sign of their union, she has placed a wedding ring
on the finger of the woman. Yet, the significant thing is that
the wedding ring has been placed on the third finger of the right
hand instead of the left. Moreover, it is made from a bit of laven-
der thread. Virginia has a very definite symbolism of color, among
which purple (lavender being a lighter purple) means virginity, and
passion, two concepts which she always joins into one. She has
also given the man a ring of lavender thread. Therefore, although
the One Woman and the One Man are finally married, yet is the
marriage not one of fact, for virginity rules.
Another way in which our patient referred to this last couple
was, as The Helping Hand. The Helping Hand is a widely copied
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380 ARSAH B. EVASTS
and well-known picture of a hardy, kindly faced old sailor, rowing
a boat across the tossing waves, with his tiny daughter sitting eager
and important beside him, with her soft little hands upon the oar
handle, helping father row. No better picture to express her own
strong father attachment could our patient have found.
" And I picked up the third bead, and I hcg3n going down and
going down and going down. And the water rushed up and covered
me. And I called to a man who was going by and he did not pay
any attention." The curse of the third bead then is the motive of
this portion of the lace. After having suffered all she possibly could
suffer, because of her desire for the Highest, she has given up,
and has been going down and going down until she is living in com-
parative comfort with her incestuous fancies. She is still suffering
untold torment. The sentence with which she opened the discus-
sion of her life and fancies was : " I tell you no one but God Al-
mighty knows the agony I suffer, both bodily pain and heartache."
If her sufferings become too terrible, she still has the remedy of
complete oblivion of the waters rushing up to cover her.
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE: A MOTIVE OF
EARLY LITERATURE IN THE UGHT OF
FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY
By Albert K. Weinberg
It is significant that the newer psychopathology does not limit
itself to phenomena that are strictly pathological. The same uncon-
scious trends which are shown in disordered mental states influence
as well men's normal manifestations, and the difference between nor-
mality and abnormality lies in coordination of consciousness rather
than in content. These considerations, it seems to me, open up new
and really amazing vistas; the principles evolved by Freud in the
study of the neuroses possess a range of applicability coextensive
with the mental sciences. It is hoped that the present study may be
of some value in illustrating this larger significance of the psycho-
analytic formulations.
Rtunmaging in the archives of philology, one encounters a prob-
lem of unusual subjective interest. Due to the enigmatic character
of the phenomenon with which it is concerned, this problem has
under various titles been the subject of quite large discussion.
Briefly stated it is as follows: In many parts of the early literature,
there appears a tendency to emphasize and glorify the relation be-
tween the nephew and the uncle on the mother's side. The reference
to this relation is of such frequency, and the bond between nephew
and maternal uncle assumes at times such dramatic importance (even
to the extent of monopolizing the interest), that there is presented
a question which demands consideration. What is the basis of this
phenomenon which at first glance aflfords certainly no clue to its
import?
Nowhere are the affectionate and intimate relations between
nephew and maternal uncle more conspicuous than in the Old
French Chansons de Geste. The persistence and striking character
of the motive in that cycle has indmced one scholar to devote to the
subject an exhaustive treatise. To quote Dr. Famsworth: "Even
the more or less casual reader of the Old French epic poems cannot
have failed to be impressed by the constant, pervading, and almost
obtrusive glorification of the relations between tmcle and nephew."
381
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382 ALBERT K. WEINBERG
In almost every instance, it is disclosed, the uncle is the maternal
uncle; the nephew, in other words, is the son of his uncle's sister.
We are told moreover that it is in the relations between these two,
who are united by an intense affection, that the human or dramatic
interest of the epic is to be found. Thus, though the ostensible pur-
pose of the Chanson de Roland is to depict the battle of Roncevaux
and its national consequences, the center of its human interest lies
in the affection between Roland and his maternal uncle, Oiarle-
magne. The same thing holds good of the other poems, all obtain-
ing their dramatic appeal through focalization of the nephew-mater-
nal uncle intimacy. In a resume of the most important heroes in the
Chansons de Geste who are brought into accentuated relations with
their maternal uncles, Dr. Famsworth gives the names of Roland,
Baudoin, Anseis, Gui, the four neprews of Charlemagne ; and Qgier,
Vivien, Raoul de Cambrai, Foucon, Gascelin and Aiol. But tiiere
are many more of less prominence, and the motive is one which is
pervading.
Describing in detail the form which the intimacy of the two
assumes. Dr. Famsworth writes: "The solidarity between uncle
and nephew is consistent and marked ; not only is the nephew singled
out for superlative favor and given works of the greatest conse-
quence to do by his uncle, but the latter always acts as the guide and
adviser of the young chevalier. The anxiety of the uncle when his
nephew is in danger and his rejoicing at his success in battle give
rise to some of the most dramatic passages of the French epic. . . .
It is upon the nephew that the uncle depends for aid when in danger
and for revenge when worsted, and the nephew \ocks to the uncle
for the same ministrations." In reference to the mutual dependence
of the two in battle we are told : " During their association in war
the mutual dependence of unde and nephew is evident throughput ;
where one is, the other is to be found, and each looks after the wel-
fare of the other. This attitude of mutual helpfulness is recognized
by the other characters, and the poet himself sometimes ventures the
statement that it is a natural thing."
A document from the Old French literature that also bears inter-
estingly upon our subject is one of the preserved poems of the trou-
badour Amaut Daniel. This poem, translated in Justin H. Smith's
" Troubadours at Home," exalts the bond between nephew and uncle
in glowing terms. "There's none less dear than nephew and than
uncle "— ^is a line that is characteristic, and also " Since Aaron's rod
grew like a withe and from Lord Adam nephew sprang and uncle."
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 383
When the poet wishes to express his love for his mistress he says,
" Not e'en the sister of my uncle is dearer, nor so dear upon my
soul " or similarly " I love her more than cousin, brother, uncle " —
reaching his climax with the comparison to affection for uncle. One
assumes that the " sister of my uncle " in the preceding lines is a
reference to the mother, and that we thus again have the specific
glorification of the maternal uncle.
In the category of sister's sons, of heroes who are brought into
prominent relation with a maternal uncle, we find some of the most
well-known figures of folk-lore. As examples one may cite Beowulf,
Perceval le Gallois, Gawain, Cuchulain, Bertrand, Bemaldo del
Carpio. Searching in the old Germanic literature one will also
meet many examples of such heroes. Dargun has called attention
to the distinguishing marks of these relationships in Germanic hero-
lore, which present a striking similarity to those of the Chansons de
Geste: Nephew and uncle avenge each other; the uncle is the repre-
sentative of his nephew ; the uncle attends to his nephew's marriage ;
the nephew is often given the uncle's name ; the nephew is placed in
his uncle's tutelage ; the nephew inherits his uncle's charge ; a man
is known as his uncle's nephew rather than as his father's son. Also
mythology is not lacking in this motive. Bachofen's " Antiquarische
Briefe" considers comprehensively the instances of close relations
between nephew and maternal uncle in Hindu, Greek and Latin
m3rthologies. The story of Astika in the Mahabharata, for example,
introduces the maternal uncle as guardian and educator of the child.
This extremely brief and sketchy presentation of the material
involved will nevertheless give some idea of the problem's scope.
While it would be possible to go into greater detail in the characteri-
zation of the motive, yet I believe its nature is sufficiently clear.
To the maternal uncle there is attributed all that tender solicitude,
benevolent interest, which at least in ethical abstraction one would
posit for the father. With the greatest anxiety he watches over his
nephew's career, always rendering him aid in times of stress, and
in the event of the latter's death considering his most sacred obliga-
tion the punishment of the murderers. On the other hand, the
nephew meets the affection of the maternal uncle with feelings no
less amiable. His constant endeavor is to be of service to his rela-
tive and to gain his approval, like Roland often acting as his faithful
general or deputy. There are instances where he will snatch his
uncle from the very grip of death, as did Galien in the battle with
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384 ALBERT K. WEINBERG
the Saracens. Such are points typical in the widespread glorifica-
iton of this relationship.
It is obvious that for these phenomena there is demanded some
causative basis. Their striking nature as well as persistence pre-
clude the possibility of fortuitousness or lack of significance. Not-
ably by Famsworth* and Nitze,* the closeness of nephew and mater-
nal uncle in early literature has been interpreted literally as positing
a social order in which these two were actually brought into the
closest of relations. It is of course admitted of the literature that
it was produced at a time when the family was demonstrably upon
a modem basis. But in the predominance of this nephew-matemal-
uncle motive has been seen evidence of a prehistoric matriarchy,
which would be characterized by the position of the mother's brother
as head of the family, and which, we are told, would maintain its
impress on popular sentiment long after being actually superseded.
The chief difficulty in this explanation would be in its assumption
of a social order the probability of which, at least for the Indo-
Europeans, is severely questioned if not refuted. There is, it is true,
a school which accepts the conclusions of Bachof en's " Das Mutter-
recht," but the weight of sociologic opinion and of philological tes-
timony seems to rest on the side of the patriarchal rather than the
matriarchal hypothesis.'
^Farnsworth, W. O.: Uncle and Nephew in the Old French Chansons
de Geste: A Study in the Survival of Matriarchy. Columbia University
Press, 1913.
•Nitze, W. A.: The Sister's Son and the Conte del Graal, Modem
Philology, January, 1912, VoL IX, No. 3.
* In Sir Henry Maine's " Ancient Law " we are told that the " effect of
the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is to establish that view
of the primeval condition of the human race which is known as the Patri-
archal Theory" (p. 118). A similar stand is taken by Westermarck in "The
History of Human Marriage." Westermarck considers the hypothesis that
the maternal uncle was the head of the family and denies its feasibility.
Zimmer, in his " Altindisches Leben," describes the original Indo-European
family with the father at the head. For the purpose of briefly summarizing
authoritative opinion upon this question, particularly in its relation to the
Indo-Europeans, I may perhaps do best in quoting a passage from George E.
Howard's "The Patriarchal Theory." ("A History of Matrimonial Institu-
tions," VoL I, p. 9, The University of Chicago Press, 1904.) " For the Indo-
Germanic or Aryan peoples the investigations of Zimmer, Schrader, Delbrudc,
Kohler, and especially the researches of Leist, enable us to speak with a
higher degree of confidence, though only for the period covered by positive
linguistic and legal evidence. Bachofen, McLennan, and after them many
other writers, . . . have maintained that among all branches of the Aryan
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 385
The solution, I believe, that would first suggest itself to the
psychoanalytic viewpoint, would hinge on the fact that the uncle is
the maternal uncle. That is to say, it might be thought that this
phenomenon is in some way related to the nuclear mother-complex
so dynamic in life. It is true that of the two uncles the mother's
brother will be preferred, by mere reason of the fact that he is on
the mother's side. We remember that in "Jean Christophe" the
lovable old Gottfried, whose friendship with Christophe was one of
the most vivid episodes of the hero's childhood, was a maternal
stock conclusive proofs exist of a former matriarchate, or at any rate, of ex-
clusive succession in the female line. But this view is decidedly rejected, if
not entirely overthrown, by the philologists, and depends for its support on
the presence in later institutions of alleged survivals. The judgment of Del-
brtick must probably be accepted as decisive for the present state of lin-
guistic, if not of all scientific, inquiry. He declares that ' no sure traces of a
former maternal family among the Indo-Germanic peoples have been pro-
duced.' Similar conclusions are reached by Schrader, Max Mtiller, and Leist
Also, among the institutional writers, Wake declares that ' primitively, among
the peoples belonging to the wide-spread Aryan or Indo-European stock,
while relationship was acknowledged through both parents, descent was
traced preferably in the male line'; and Bernhoft, constrained through the
evidence presented by Schrader and Delbrtick, believes that it is now placed
' beyond question that the primitive Aryans did not live according to mother-
right,' but were united in family groups resembling the south Slavonian
house commtmities."
Even if one were to grant the fact of matriarchy, there would be several
difficulties in resting this phenomenon of literature upon such a causative
basis. These difficulties are frankly recognized by those who nevertheless
believe in that basis. The literature in which the motive occurs is the product
of a patriarchal state of society, so that the most that could be posited would
be the preservation in popular sentiment of the matriarchal relation long
after it had ceased to possess significance. As Professor G)mfort writes
(Comfort, W. W.: A Lapsed Relationship, Dublin Review, Oct., 1916) : "The
literary evidence does not of course date from a state of matriarchy. All
human literature is the product of the present patriarchal state. The father
is the head of the family in mediaeval as in modem literature." In the case
of ^e Chansons de Geste, compositions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
the chronological disparity between the poems and the actual matriarchy is
quite tremendous. Dr. Fams worth speaks of the influence that the Roman
occupation of Gaul, completed by 50 B.C., would have exercised destructively
upon any dissimilar social order. The Salian and Ripuarian laws, we are also
told, prove in the sixth century the complete fusion of maternal and paternal
relatives. Professor Comfort, it is true, discloses that the legal institutions
of the Picts and Celts show marked favor to the sister's son down to a com-
paratively late time. But he nevertheless writes : " The general lack of formal
legislation in favor of the sister's son is remarkable in view of the constant
popular sentiment which, we shall presently see, existed in his favor."
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386 ALBERT K. WEINBERG
uncle. Some strange prejudice which goes back to unconscious de-
terminism would' make it impossible to picture Gottfried as the
father's brother. Yet we cannot accept the fixation upon the mother
as an adequate explanation of this phenomenon, unquestioned as is
the subordinate role it plays in its motivation. It is incomprehen-
sible why the mother-libido should persistently adopt this peculiar
means of egress. This solution, specious though it first appear,
hardly withstands serious reflection, and I think we must go farther
in our search.
Another standpoint might conceive as significant the fact that the
nephew is a sister's son. There are several considerations which
would tend to encourage such an approach. We know that the love
for a sister, who best revives the mother-image, embraces a complex
of no little moment and that it is a common thing for a man to call
his sweetheart " sister." To the affection of brother for ^ster folk-
lore gives us many testimonies. An old German proverb runs to the
effect that to take vengeance for a sister is better than thirst for
gold. In the early English ballads is found the following passage :
" There is no man would touch my one little sister
That I would not make powder of his bones."^
The Germania of Tacitus affords the following interesting passage
in connection with a description of one of the Germanic tribes:
"Sororum filiis idem apud avunculum, qui apud patrem, honor.
Quidam sanctiorem arctioremque hunc necum sanguinis arbitrantur,
et in accipiendis obsidibus magis exigunt, tanquam ii et animum
firmius et domum latius teneant. Heredes tamen successoresque
sui cuique liberi ; et nullum testamentum."* Since specific reference
is here made to an objective love of the uncle for his sister's son,
there is provided additional evidence for the hypothesis that the
sister complex is an important factor in the production of this motive.
When we turn to the Chansons de Geste, where the relations be-
tween uncle and nephew have been studied in detail, we find indeed
that no little emphasis is laid on the fact that the nephew is the son
^ Douglas Hyde : Love Songs of Connacht
^ Children are regarded with equal affection by their maternal uncles as
by their fathers; some even consider this as the more sacred bond of con-
sanguinity, and prefer it in the requisition of hostages, as if it held the mind
by a firmer tie and the family by a more extensive obligation. A person's
own children, however, are his heirs and successors and no wills are made.
(Germania, Cap. 2a The Oxford Translation.)
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 387
of his uncle's sister. Psychoanalysis, concerned with unconscious
mentation, would suggest that this tendency to direct affection
towards the sister's son is due to a repressed incestuous desire upon
the sister. He who assumes the position of father to his sister's
offspring unconsciously does so because he is thus accomplishing the
desired union with the sister. It is very interesting therefore when
we find in confirmation of this explanation a curious legend that has
arisen in connection with Charlemagne's love for his sister's son,
Roland. Dr. Farnsworth tells us this scandalous story, which grew
up after Charlemagne's death, that the Emperor had incestuous in-
tercourse with his sister Gelle, and that Roland was thus really his
own son. The interest of the legend lies of course only in its show-
ing how such thoughts, repugnant to the ethical personality, received
elaboration in the more gross and unrestrained phantasy of the folk-
mind, and are thus integ^l to consciousness. Again in the Beowulf,
we learn from Dr. Hart's " Ballad and Epic," Fitela is Sigemund's
son by his sister, Signy.
While it is undoubtedly true that an important factor in the
glorification of the nephew-maternal uncle intimacy is the sister-
complex, I do not believe that we have yet arrived at the primary
motivation. For such a conviction there are other than purely sub-
jective grounds. In tracing this motive to a sister-complex, we
should be laying all the emphasis upon the psychological tendencies
of the uncle and assuming that the affection of the nephew had no
objective significance. Although such a stand would be perfectly
legitimate, it cannot be overlooked that usually the nephew is the
important character, the uncle being prominent only because of his
intimate relations with the latter. The nephew is most often the
hero, as in the Beowulf, the Perceval, the Cuchulain Saga, the As-
tika story of the Mahabharata, and it is therefore fitting that in a
psychological consideration we should assume that the underlying
complex concerns itself with the outlook of the nephew.
It is, I believe, a familiar experience to the psychoanalyst, when
grappling with some elusive neurotic symptom, suddenly to find the
clue to the primary enigma in the less disguised character of some
simultaneous secondary manifestation. Looking at this glorification
of the bond between nephew and maternal uncle as a symptom in the
larger sense, do we find no accompanying motive, no parallel anom-
aly that would throw light on the original problem of our inves-
tigation ?
When we turn to our most elucidating source, the Chansons de
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388 ALBERT K. WEINBERG
Geste, with the intention of examining more closely the context of
the motive, our attention is arrested by one peculiarity. Side by side
with the unusual relation between nephew and maternal uncle one
finds an equally amazing rdation between son and father. It is as
if there were but one intrinsic motive, such is the proximity of the
two anomalies. As striking as the benevolence and kindness ascribed
to the maternal uncle is the harshness attributed to the father. The
contrast moreover is still further enhanced by a certain tendency
to portray the two figures side by side, as if to make each bring the
other into stronger relief.
Dr. Famsworth, to whose dissertation I am indebted for my
information upon the Chansons de Geste, writes in his chapter ** The
Attitude of the Father: " "As will be seen, the tendency is to min-
imize the intimacy between father and son while exalting that be-
tween unde and nephew ; in the latter case the closest solitarity is
the almost invariable rule, while for the most part the attitude of the
father, when the poet goes into the subject at all, is one of severity
and injustice, breeding dissension and disruption of the family rela-
tions.'' We learn not only that the poet is often reluctant on the
subject of the hero's father, but that in one instance he has even
gone so far as to omit his name. Such is the case in the Chanson
de Roland, which does not once mention Roland's father, while
everything is made of his relation to Charlemagne.
The father is continually represented as enforcing his parental
authority by means of blows. Often he will fly into a rage with the
son on the slightest provocation and will heap upon him impreca-
tions. The maternal uncle however will sometimes be portrayed as
here interceding in his nephew's behalf and offsetting the anger of
the father. In the Enfances Vivien, when the young Bertrand bums
to enter battle, his father, Bernart, strikes him and says roughly:
" Tais toi, lichieres orguillox, fui desi"^ The maternal unde Guil-
laume, however, laughs good-naturedly and reminds him kindly that
he is not old enough to fight.
In Doon de Mayence, when Doon is about to leave his father to
obtain training at the hands of his uncle, the father on no provoca-
tion strikes him a furious blow. In particular is this unkindness
here without justification since Doon had tenderly been caring for
his blind father eight years :
*Keep silence, proud rake, make haste from here. (In all the citations
from the Chansons de Geste, I have utilized the translations of Dr. Fams-
worth in his " Uncle and Nephew in the Chansons de Geste.")
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 389
Lors le fieri de la paulme sur le viz, qu'il ot gns;
Puis luy a dit; ''Beaul fix, bellemcnt et par gas
Pour ce t'ay je feru que ja ne roubliras."
(Doon di Mayince, 2478) ^
Aiol gives an example of uncalled for brutality on the part of
the father. When Elie's son, who has been his benefactor in a thou-
sand ways, commits no greater offense than playfully pretending
his father's favorite horse is dead, Elie for this harmless jest falls
upon him furiously with a stick, reviling him: Faus lechieres, fol
glous demeures} Again in the Siege de Barbastre, the father Bovon
berates his son Gerart without justification, and when the latter seeks
to defend himself, is only prevented from beating him by others
present
The father is sometimes depicted as wilfully disinheriting his
son, as in the unedited Guibert d'Andrenas. Aymeri decides to be-
queath his property to a godson instead of to the natural heir, Gui-
bert. The son rebels in the following speech :
" Non f erez pere ; par Dieu lo fil Marie !
Deseriter me volez par folie,
S'estranges Hon a ma terre sesie.*^
Aymeri, the father, then falls into a passion at this bold speech and
berates his son : Glos, lechiere, fil a garcon, mauvais couart proves?^
Be it remembered that opposed to all this unkindness on the part
of the father is the benevolence and affection of the maternal uncle.
Sometimes the contrast is quite direct, as in the Enfances Vivien
when the life of Vivien is at stake: the father of Vivien assumes an
attitude of complete indifference, while the maternal uncle goes to
Louis to implore his aid in his nephew's rescue. Aye d^ Avignon
gives us an instance of two nephews actually betraying their father
in order that they may render aid to their maternal unde. Gamier,
and then fighting in conjunction with the uncle against the father.
The cruelty with which the father is invested in the Chansons de
Geste is best illustrated by the amazing phenomenon of fathers giv-
ing over their sons as hostages to certain death. In the Chanson de
'Then he strikes him with his palm upon his face, which was pHimp.
Then he said to him : ** Fair son, gently and in jest did I strike you, so that
you will not forget it"
> False rake, foolish, arrogant glutton.
•You shall not do it, father 1 By God the son of Maryl You wish to
disinherit me through madness, if a stranger is possessed of my inheritknce.
>• Rake, dog, low-bom son, vile proven coward.
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390 ALBERT K. WEINBEEG
Roland, the pagan king Marsile, to induce the victorious Charle-
magne to leave Spain, offers to send him twenty or thirty of their
sons, among them his own, as hostages, and promises to follow him
to France later and become converted. But he by no means intends
to keep his covenant and looks forward quite calmly to the death of
the hostages and his son. When he announces the ruse to his fellow-
countrymen, they give their assent and seem to regard it a quite
natural thing:
" S'cn vuelt ostages, e vus Ten enveiez
O dis o vint pur lui afiancier.
Enveiums i les filz de noz nuilliers;
Par num d'ocire enveierai le mien.
Assez est mielz qu'il i perdent les chiefs,
Que nus perdium i'honur ne la deintet,
Ne nus seium cunduit a mendeier."
Paien respundent ; ** Bien fait a otreier ". . . .
"Viendrat li jun, si passerat li termes,
N'orrat de nus paroles ne nuveles.
Li Reis est fiers, e sis curages pesmes ;
De noz ostages f erat trenchier les testes ;
Assez est mielz que la vie il i perdent
Que nus perdium clere Espaigne la bele
Ne nus aium les mals ne les sufferaits.**
Dient paien ; " Issi poet 11 bien estre."^^
(Roland, 40 ff.)
The tendency to depict the father as cruel or treat him as non-
existent, which displays itself so obtrusively in the Chansons de
Geste alongside of the exaltation of the maternal uncle, is recognized
in the nomenclature of Freud's djmamic psychology under the head-
ing of father-complex, to use the broader category, CEdipus-com-
plex. The resentment of the father's domineeringness, the uncon-
scious desire to rebel s^inst his authority, are apparent not merely
in the dissected dreams of neurotics. Mythology, in which Abraham
^^ " If he wishes hostages do you send him some. Ten or twenty, to give
him confidence. Let us send him sons of our wives ; even were he to be put
to death, I will send him mine. Much better is it for them to lose their heads
tiian for us to lose our lands and our estates, and be reduced to begging."
The pagans reply : " It is well to grant this." ..." The day will come, the
limit will pass, he will not hear word or news of us; the king is haughty,
and his heart is implacable; he will have the heads of our hostages cut off;
better is it that they shall lose their lives, than that we shall lose bright
Sjain, the beautiful, and have woe and su£Fering." The pagans say: "This
can well be so."
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 39I
sees the repressed life of the infantile psyche of the race, offers
likewise suggestions of such a trend. We recall the revolt of the
Titans against their father Uranus, and the castration of the latter
by his son Cronus. Cronus, according to one version, suflFered in
turn the same treatment at the hands of his son, Zeus. There) is
also the myth of Prometheus and his rebellion, related to those pre-
ceding by the fact that Zeus is father of gods and men." Psycho-
analysis, attempting to explain this father-hatred in the more biologic
terms of life's sexual substratum, traces it to jealousy bom of the
early attachment of the child to the mother. It is not inconceivable
that from the one thwarting role the father might then come to per-
sonify life's entire rebuff to the Lust-prinsip.
It would indeed suggest itself that the exaltation of the maternal
unde and his relation with the child might be ultimately related to
some such father-complex.** This certainly is the impression that
one gains from the Chansons de Geste. Vaguely, sensing mech-
anisms which we shall try later to grasp more completely, we can
understand how the hatred of the father, strongly repressed because
unacceptable to the complete personality, might adopt as its vicarious
expression the accentuation of this rival relation with the kind,
responsive maternal uncle. But it will not do, with such a large
field at hand, to base our hypothesis on a consideration of the Chan-
sons de Geste alone. Let us turn to other literature wherein this
motive figures and see if here there are not offered the same indi-
cations of father-complex that are so obtrusive in the Chansons de
Geste.
We discover that it is with other popular heroes as with Roland :
all mention of the father is omitted in the midst of the most ex-
travagant description of the hero's friendly relations with a maternal
uncle. In the Beowulf much is made of his relation to the maternal
uncle, Hygelac, while almost nothing comes out in regard to Beo-
wulf's father. Of Perceval the same thing is true. He is intro-
duced as a sister's son and Professor Nitze says in regard to flie
maternal uncle that " a closer male relative Perceval could not have
^s The work of Richard Payne Knight and others ^ows, it is true, that
these myths were intended to be symbolic. Nevertheless it is of significance
that one particular form was chosen rather than any other, and the myths
will still possess psychological implications.
i»The repressed feelings that are connoted by "father-complex" have
of course no relation whatever with age. They by no means disappear as
soon as the father loses his original significance, as soon as the child leaves
the family circle.
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392 ALBERT K. WEINBB&G
had." Cuchulain» similarly, is presented as the sister's son of Conr
chobar ; the latter acts to him as foster-father and not the slightest
mention is made of the actual parent. Professor Comfort tells us
that Gawain in Perceval le Gdlois always refers to himself as U
flies rot artu. It is the same with Gawain's son. Gawain and his
son fight unrecognized, and later, when their identity is disclosed,
the boy tells his father he has always been known as his uncle's
nephew. Is it possible that this fight between father and son pos-
sesses psychological significance? We shall return to the point
later on. Professor Gummere, in an interesting paper,^* writes of
the relations of nephew and maternal uncle in the English and Scot-
tish popular ballads. Many of the popular heroes have a maternal
uncle who stands to them as foster-father, and the paternal relations
are very colorless.
Professor Potter has written a bode** in study of the epic of
Sohrab and Rustem, familiar through the poem of Mathew Arnold's.
The theme of Sohrab and Rustem is, as is well known, that of a
combat between father and son. The particular interest that Pro-
fessor Potter's book possesses for us here is in this : it points out
that the theme of a combat between father and son frequently goes
hand in hand with the most intimate relations between nephew and
maternal uncle. The father deserts the mother or has had only tem-
porary relations with her, and the son is then brought up by the
maternal uncle, a bond of affection arising between the two. Later
when the child sets out in life he meets the father and the two fight
unrecognized. This is the motive that we saw in Perceval le Gallois,
in the combat of Gawain and his son. It is difHcult not to see these
battles of father and son as related to the father-complex. True, the
two fight in ignorance of their identity and afterwards there is usu-
ally the reconciliation, but recent trends in psychology have em-
phasized the importance of looking further than manifest content
with its inevitable disguises.
Bachofen's " Antiquarische Brief e," chapters of which treat the
manifestations of this motive in mythology, is unfortunately inac-
cessible at the present time. We learn from Dr. Famsworth how-
^^ Gummere, Frances B.: The Sister's Son in the English and Scottish
Popular Ballads. In: An English Miscellany, presented to Dr. Furnivall in
Honor of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, pp. laS-i^P* Oxford, 1901.
^* Potter, Murray Anthony, Sohrab and Rustem : The Epic Theme of a
Combat between Father and Son. A Study of its Genesis and Use in Litera-
ture and Popular Tradition. London, David Nntt, 1902.
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 393
ever that the uncle takes the place of the father and that there is a
triangular family consisting of mother, son, and mother's brother.
The father is thus here entirely done away with.
Reverting for a moment to historical material we alight upon
interesting data. Dr. Famsworth mentions that the history of the
Merovingian kings, as related by Gregory of Tours, affords many
instances of close relations between nephew and uncle in connection
with discord and ill-treatment on the part of the father. There is,
for example, the story of Chramne, son of Clotaire, who unites with
his uncle Childebert in conspiracy against his father. Childebert
happens to be a paternal uncle but the psychic mechanism illustrated
retains its implications.
In the Italian Nerbonesi the intense devotion of Bertrand to his
maternal uncle Guillaume runs through the entire story. There is
one episode which is significant. Guillaume, together with Bertrand,
is besieged in the city of Orange, and is reduced to desperate cir-
cumstances. Bertrand manages to escape from the city and goes in
search of aid for his uncle. When he applies to his father he is re-
fused, and Bertrand then rebukes the latter in this furious tirade :
"O ingrato, e ditnentico, non mi chiamare figliuolo, ch'io non t'appello
tnai piu per padre, che doveresti essere da tutti i cristiani perseverato insino
alia tnorte, e per tutto il mondo cacciato ! lo non sono si f anciuUo, come io
era quando mi desti la guanciata a Parigi, che se non fussi la vergogna, e '1
peccato, io ti farei provare se la mia ispada taglia. O ingrato, non ti raccorda
quando fusti cacciato di Busbante d'Arrighetto, e Guglielmo ti riscosse, e
dietti la signoria? Pure quale signoria acquistati tu mai? Or non ti fece
Guglielmo signore? Sappi ch'egli e molto da piu di te Ghibellino, il quale si
proferse sh medesimo in avere, e in persona aiutare la colonna del sangue
nerbonese; la quale colonna, s'ella peririL, che vale il nostro nome de' Ner-
bonesi? Morto Guglielmo, tutti morti siamo. Ora ti rimani, ch'io ti giuro
per la fe, la quale io giurai a Guglielmo, e a dama Tiborga, e per la fe, ch'io
giurai a re Aluigi, che se Guglielmo iscampa di tanta fortuna, e tu non sia
nelle battaglie in suo aiuto, che noi non ti lascieremo tanto di terra che tu
possi avere sepoltura.^*
These data, which show the accentuation of the nephew-uncle
attachment to be accompanied by a depreciation of the bond between
son and father, would seem to me to be significant. On their basis
we should view this phenomenon as the manifestation of uncon-
scious trend and venture to interpret it from the standpoint of a
d)mamic psychology. At the same moment we are arrived at our
solution. Since one side of the equation established by the paral-
^« Nerbonesi, I, pp. 45>-3.
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394 ALBERT K. WEINBEBG
lelism of these two motives is known, determinable as to its value,
our quandary with regard to the other is overcome. The exaltation
throughout the range of early literature of the relation between
nephew and maternal uncle would appear the manifestation of a
universal unconscious father-complex.
That which the motive envisages is an unconscious repugnance
to the relation with the father. Of this repugnance it is the hysteric,
vicarious expression. The dislike of the father-figure, not daring
to manifest itself unequivocally, adopts as its outlet the stressing of
this rival relationship, and the father, either disparagingly removed
from the scenes or represented as brutal and unparental, is super-
seded by the maternal uncle. The exaltation that the latter then re-
ceives must be understood as equivalent psychologically to the
defamation of the father. We may posit for the kindness and af-
fection attributed to the maternal uncle a twofold significance. On
the one hand it would by implication contrast with the severity of
the father, a severity which may or may not be objective but which
in either event has its reality in the subjective apperception of the
son. On the other hand — ^but perhaps these two functions are really
very related — it would establish an ideal father, a conception which
has its prerequisite in the deficiency of the actual parent.
The mechanism by which an ethically unacceptable hatred for a
certain figure is given vicarious expression in the accentuation of his
rival, is one of universal character. It is essentially the same mech-
anism to which Rank makes reference in his ** Myth of the Birth of
the Hero." Rank speaks of that strange tendency, so universal as
to be almost axiomatic, to represent the hero or demi-god as being
brought up at the hands of foster-parents, usually after exposure on
the part of the actual. These foster-parents are invariably por-
trayed as kind and appreciative, humble though in circumstance
they often are. The psychological basis of this foster-parent motive
Rank has shown to lie in the narcissistic dissatisfaction of the child
with the actual parent. This infantile dissatisfaction achieves ex-
pression in the conceiving of foster-parents, on whose benevolence
and graciousness all emphasis is laid. Also children, when scolded
by one of the parents, will suddenly manifest a quite exaggerated
love for the parent with whom they are not in disfavor, or for some
other member of the family. It is as if by this means they were se-
curing vengeance on the one who had delivered the reprimand. A
mother, to manifest her displeasure with the one of her two children
who has given offense, will exhibit (in the presence of the one in
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 395
disfavor) an unwonted aflfection for the other. Aggression is only
one aspect of revolt ; there is always the setting up of the golden
calf which acts as a sort of consummation to the rebellion itself.
In a case where the active, primary part of the iconoclastic act is
balked, as in the revolt against the father-domination by ethical con-
sideration, emphasis will tend to be shifted to the secondary, more
passive phase. Thus there is the stressing of the bond between
nephew and maternal uncle.
The question as to why just the mother's brother is selected for
this role of rival father is not a difficult one. We may exclude at
the outset the possibility of the paternal uncle serving the purpose
equally well. The father's brother, because of the natural tend-
ency to identify him with the father, will be rather disliked. In the
Latin the word for maternal uncle is " avunculus," a diminutive of
affection that also carries with it a comparison to the fond grand-
father, "avus"; the connotation of the word for paternal uncle
however presents a most striking contrast. " Patruus," the classical
lexicographer tells us, evolved into a term of opprobrium, a synonym
for the male termagent. Thus in the odes of Horace (III, 12) there
is the phrase " patruae verbera linguae," in the satires (II, 3) " ne sis
patruus mihi." It is also significant that in the familiar motive of
literature, the cruel uncle who persecutes the young hero is in-
variably a paternal uncle.*^
The particular suitability of the maternal uncle for the role of
rival father embraces several considerations. In the first place he
is the maternal uncle, and in his exaltation, as we have already seen,
a portion of the mother-libido will achieve expression. Then again
there enters here the fact that the nephew will stand to him as sister's
son. The glorification of this relationship becomes thus a conden-
1^ In " Nicholas Nickleby " the sinister Mr. Ralph Nickleby is a paternal
uncle. The paternal uncle in Stevenson's " Kidnapped " first tries to take his
young nephew's life and is then the cause of his cruel abduction. In Tur-
geneVs "Fathers and Children" the paternal uncle, while not unkind, S3rm-
bolizes together with the father the old order which is repellent to the rebel-
lious spirit of youth. " Richard Carvel," by Winston Churchill, gives another
example of a cruel father's brother, through whose instrumentality the young
hero, as in Stevenson's novel, is kidnapped. In two other recent novels,
" Oliver Horn " and " Peter " by F. Hopkinson. Smith, the motive also fig-
ures prominently. Grimme's legend of the two brothers (No. 60) contains the
cruel paternal uncle who induces the father to expose the children. Clau-
dius, we know, is Hamlet's paternal uncle, and both "King John" and
" Richard III," while adaptations of historical phenomena, owe their dramatic
poignancy to the utilization of this theme.
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396 ALBEBT K. WEINBB&G
sation proceeding from both the father-complex and the sister-
complex, though the latter is decidedly subordinate. If the nephew
is a sister's son there is also provided a basis upon which to ration^
alige the entire phenomenon. Since there is apparent nothing repre-
hensible in the affection of a man for his sister's son, all emphasis
will be laid upon that phase of the relationship, and it will not be
obvious that the fond maternal imcle is the product of an in-
compatible unconscious trend. The formula "Thou art my sister's
son " is nothing but a mode of concealment.
Finally there is an aspect of the question which I indicate with
some hesitation, uncertain of the hypothesis involved. In "Die
Ursprung der Melusinensaga " Kohler interestingly remarks that
hostility between a man and his sister's husband is a phenomenon by
no means uncommon. The basis of this hostility we know to be
unconscious jealousy. But one immediately sees how this fact of
hostility between the maternal uncle and the father might bear a
relation to our problem. If we were to assume that the folk mind
recognizes the animosity between these two, there would be addi-
tional appropriateness in causing just the maternal imcle to super-
sede the father. Uncle and nephew moreover would be imited in
disliking the same figure.
The full significance of this motive is only grasped when it is
recalled that the possessors of these fond maternal uncles who serve
in lieu of fathers are heroes. I wonder if one would go much astray
in attempting to deduce an inherent connection here where there ap-
pears only coincidence. The hero is the personification of man's
own libido ; into his conception there enter our deepest values, con-
scious and unconscious. Is it not possible that the complete perfec-
tion on which depend the hero's potency and his approximation to
phantasy's ideal would be somewhat tarnished were we to fetter
him with a father? That in his freedom from the disgrace of sub-
jection he must also never have experienced that subjection to the
father which is probably the prototype of all bondage?** Such in-
deed would seem to be an implication of this motive, which if it does
not always remove the father completely, reduces at least the rela-
tion with him to the greatest insignificance.
But perhaps we have not even yet seen all. What if we should
attempt to state heroism in the ultimate terms of the unconscious,
to reduce it to its equivalent in the mass of psychogenetic material?
^> In the relation of the «on with the mother, the factor of affection is
present to such an extent as to efface all suggestion of domination.
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NEPHEW AND MATERNAL UNCLE 397
(This process is one no longer considered impossible; in all its
eventual complexity of content consciousness is yet believed to
cluster about the primal infantile associations.) Should we not en-
counter, if not as the only motivating factor at least as one of great
importance, the early relation of the child with the father and the
emotions to which it gave rise The hero is he who is completely
free, he who in the assertion of his ego has overcome all resistance,
broken from all bondage. But the psychic prototype of all servitude,
let us once more recall, is the child's subjection to the father. So
that heroism would in a sense appear the revolt against the father
dotnination.
Returning then to our motive we might venture to translate
"These are heroes and nephews" into psychoanalytic language —
"These are heroes because nephews." They have dared to replace
the wonted relation of son and father with that of nephew and ma-
ternal uncle.
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TRANSLATION
A STUDY OF THE MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD
By Dr. H. von Hug-Hellmuth
Translated from the German by
James J. Putnam, M.D.
HABVAKD MEDICAL SCHOOL
AND
Mabel Stevens
WELLESLEY
VI. Speech (Die Sprache)
(Continued from page 322)
It is no exaggeration to say that the child's life is made up of
love and play. Only what brings him love, only what can be made
use of in play, has significance and value for him. His speech, too,
is developed from this double need of his nature. Even the first
faltering sounds, as we have seen, are the expression of auto-erotism,
as one of its infinite variations; and the speech of the maturing
child, full of intelligence as it is, continues to bear witness to the
presence of these components. In the angry shrieking of abusive
words offended self-love rages like a fiery steed ; while on the other
hand, in the form of (bestowing) flattering caresses, the soul of the
child shows its longing for tenderness. .The constant asking of ques-
tions by children — in addition to the intellectual gain thus secured —
aims at attracting the undivided attention of the people about them.
Sully is mistaken in thinking that a morbid inquisitiveness accounts
for this questioning habit ;^ a far more important cause is the wish
for the exclusive devotion of a loved person. And the monologues
of a child who is left to himself are dictated by love and by its
^As the cause of this questioning habit psycho-analysis has discovered
the " Sphinxqucstion," — "Where do little children come from?"
398
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 399
psychological counterpart hate, that is, one might say, by the positive
and by the negative influence of the mainspring (Triebfeder) of all
human activity. To listen to conversations of that kind, which chil-
dren carry on with themselves, is to arrive at a deep insight into the
growth, into the evolution, of the childish mind (Seele). In such
conversations the child's feeling accurately reveals (displays) itself
because it clothes itself in the words which seem to him to be the
most suitable, and the instinctive selection is made without regard
to the censorship of adults. It is natural disposition and sex that
are mainly concerned in giving to the speech of children its peculiar
stamp, though the environment in which the child grows up also
plays its part. This latter influence, however, is less important than
is usually supposed. If this were not so, it would be impossible to
explain how it happens that vulgar expressions are able to gain a
secure footing in the vocabulary of even the most carefully guarded
children. Such children are often the very ones to treasure each
obscene word as a valuable acquisition, and to bring them out even
when but half understood. Naturally, the words which give the
greatest pleasure to the child in using them, are obscene designations
for bodily needs (functionings) and for special parts of the body.
Some time ago, when my nephew was five-and-a-half years old, in
describing one of his dreams I reported* how, on the day before the
dream, he ran around the room as if possessed and cried out, —
" Auntie H — , I am going to sit down here and make you a ' Patzen *
(soft lump)" — ^an expression which his mother had repeatedly for-
bidden him to use. And not long after that, when he had a bad
stomach ache and relieved himself by vomiting, he could not tell of
it often enough, laughing roguishly all the while. "Listen! I've
been vomiting (ich hab' g'spieb'n). Do you have to ' speiben ' some-
times, too " And when at last I answered a trifle angrily, — " Yes,
if you must be so vulgar ! " — ^he told the story over in the afternoon,
when in an electric car, proclaming in a loud voice, — " Auntie H —
has to vomit if I am vulgar." I remember from my own childhood,
that I liked to use vulgar expressions, especially within hearing of
my mother. This habit, often appearing in children, is to be re-
garded as a rule as a piece of mischievousness. But mischievousness
of this sort is not without an admixture of malice; and on this ac-
count, perhaps, it should be classified as speech-sadism, in an un-
developed form (Wortsadismus). This passion for using obscene
sHellmuth, Traum eines funfeinhalbjahringen Knaben, Zentralbl. fur
Psychoanalyse, III, 3.
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400 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
words often leads to the putting together of syllables, meaningless
in themselves, which eventually take the form of some expression
which the child has in mind. Not long ago, I heard a little girl about
three years of age, singing twenty times or more, " Lo — ^lo — ^lo — polo
— popo!"; and the following chain of syllables, "Wissi — ^wissi —
wisschi — wi ! **, as used by a four-year-old boy, was not without in-
dication of the same tendency. It is certain that the erotism of the
palate- and lip-zone, which is so strongly marked, plays its part in
maintaining the word-repetitions that often go on at such unwearied
length. For a while, in his sixth year, my nephew said the self-
invented word, '' Bu-url-bbauer," again and again, until finally he
sprang up, his whole body a-quiver, rubbed his lips and cried, —
" Oh ! I can't stand it, it tickles so." One can make observations of
a similar nature quite generally, where children are concerned, in
regard to the gutturals and the labials. To say "b — b— b" until
physically exhausted is a form of play met with most frequently
among very small children, but it is not confined to them; even
grammar-school scholars and girls in their teens sometimes make
themselves almost die of laughing through producing the same sound
over and over, by playing on the lips with the fingers. These ob-
servations also point to word-sadism as well as to auto-sadism. The
refrain, "La — ^la — ^lal", so often repeated in many songs — ^indeed,
perhaps " the yodel '* itself, with its stereotyped " Dulio— Dulio *' —
may have come originally from the experience of the pleasurable
excitation of certain parts of the mouth and of the larynx — ^sensa-
tions which are reinforced by the satisfaction that always attends
rhythmical repetitions.* This statement is borne out by the expe-
rience, to which children frequently bear witness, that the sensations
felt by them in the mouth and throat during singing are exceedingly
agreeable. A nine-year-old boy described this pleasure to me — ^then
a girl of seven — ^by comparing it to the pleasurable feelings excited
by playing with himself "down there" (beim Spielen da unten).
When correctly noted, such expressions made by children will be
found to give indisputable proof of the soundness of the psycho-
analytic teachings, which although based upon the histories of
neurotic patients, provide a very valuable means of approach to the
study of the nature and course of development of the mental life of
normal people.
Beside the auto-erotic motives for the habit of echolalia, there
* That a sexual note is attached to this, follows from the fact that certain
rhsrthmical movements lead to the orgasm.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 4OI
are others which have reference to the relations (of an unpleasant
sort, it must be said) subsisting between children and their neigh-
bors. A convenient means of disturbing and irritating people aroimd
him is oflFered the child in the ceaseless word repetitions ; and he em-
ploys them to express stubbornness and self-will, precisely as he
makes use of so many other acts of obstinacy. In general, playing
with speech (das Spielen mit der Sprache) is well adapted to many
a transgression of etiquette. The well-bred child knows very well
that punishment, more or less severe, is supposed to follow rude lan-
guage toward parents and toward other members of the family ; but
how shall he free himself of his feelings of resentment (or of en-
mity), feelings which have been plentifully stored up even against
the persons most loved? The mother- wit of the child knows how to
find a way out of the difficulty. He has but to invent, for the person
who for the moment is the object of his dislike, a series of innocent
seeming names, such as names of different pieces of household fur-
niture, of different animals, etc., in order in the end to arrive at an
expression, still permissible but which the initiated can understand
in the sense intended. It was not "nonsense," nor sheer mischief,
that made little Scupin,^ in his third year, designate the people
round him in the strangest fashions, such as, — *' Mamma is poison "
(he knows that word from his father's deadly cyanide of potassium
glass) ; " Grandma is stupid ; " " Mamma is a HuUeganssen ; "
" Papa is a stove." It was not without thought that he chose for
his mother, at one time the designation " poison," which of course
had been explained to him as something dangerous, something dread-
ful, something that one must not touch — ^and at another time, the
word " HuUeganssen." It was not a flattering term that he selected
for his grandma ; and only for the person whom he held in peculiar
respect, namely his father, did the child halt at the word, "stove."
At the end of his third year, he used to call the people of the house-
hold " rascals," and ran screaming with delight from one person to
another to honor each of them with this form of address.' K. Groos
reports* that little Marie G — , in her third year, called out to her
father, — "Papa, you are a — stove; you are a — opiate." And Groos
adds : — " The expression of her face betrayed all too plainly that in
her inmost heart she carried the thought of designations which were
much less harmless." My nephew, who lived in my house during
* Scupin, 1. c, I, p. 125.
» Scupin, L c I, p. 195.
' K. Groos, Die Spiele der Menschen, p. 289.
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402 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
his fourth year, was warned not to disturb my siesta after dinner.
To all appearances he submitted willingly, but one noon he began, —
" Auntie H — , you are a lamp, a table, a salver, a wine-glass, a plant
in a flower-pot, a chaise longue." Another boy brought out a similar
set of names in honor of his father, and closed the list with, — ^" You
are a broken carpet-beater" (with such a carpet-beater the little fel-
low had received a few blows from his father, a few days before) .
When there is a wish in the background of a child's mind, however,
a wish which he hopes to have fulfilled, then the little rogue takes
pains to think out the most attractive comparisons possible. " Auntie
H — , you are a new feather hat, a bottle of perfumery, — ^a prom-
enader ; you are a chocolate layer-cake too, — ^you are an automaton.
(This had reference to the chocolate figures (Schokoladenauto-
maten) from which he was allowed, once in a while, to pull out a
sweet morsel.) All these diflferent designations were indirect ex-
pressions of his wish to go to walk with me and to be taken to a
confectioner's shop. In this way the child-mind imderstands how to
express, as through the " language of flowers," what he is forbidden
to say in direct words — or else it is something in regard to which his
awakening pride fears to be repulsed. The mistakes and errors in
the use of words, the " Wortcntstellungen " so common among chil-
dren, are to be explained not only as the result of ordinary slips and
blunders, but also as based on mental causes of more complex sort
Students of child-life (auf padologischem Gebiete) are apt to
classify such mistakes (Entstellungen) as "reproductive" and "ap-
perceptive," but overlook the factor which is perhaps of most sig-
nificance — ^namely, the work of the unconscious mental processes
which intentionally allows the ideas inspired by it to take a wrong
path in order to secure expression for the thoughts and wishes that
have been forcibly repressed and pushed aside. Just as the adult
seeks to mask the utterances of his " subconscious " by giving the
excuse of having made a mistake in speaking, a mistake in writing,
etc., so does the child, even at the first stage of speech-development,
know how to express forbidden cravings (Geliiste) under the pro-
tective cover (Deckmantel) of imperfect ability to speak. And so
too, at a later stage, through the instinctively adopted device of a
regression to the baby-speech of early childhood, he sets himself
back into a period of life in which much was yet permitted him
which is forbidden to the older child. Also through intentional
chai^ng of the form of words, in doing which he goes backward in
memory to the time when he first learned to speak, he succeeds in
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 4O3
giving voice to a momentarily intensified desire for tenderness, such
as formerly had found expression in the flattering terms which
mother and child exchanged in a language imderstood only by themr
selves. No lexicon can contain all the pet names which spring from
the child's mind and heart (Gemiite). A four-year-old boy formed
from " Bube, Bubi " the pet name " Pupiluh " and applied it to his
father. Another boy who heard his motfier's " softness" (" MolHg-
keit ") jokingly praised by his father, gave her the name of " Mohli."
The vocabularies of children contain countless words of affection
which serve as threads — ^hidden from our ken — by means of which
the innermost mental life of the child is linked with the external
world. Only once in a while, in a comprehending flash, do we gain
some idea of these intimate relationships. My six-year-old nephew,
who is very much attached to me, has for a long time omitted to use
the relatively formal term, "Auntie" in his talks with me. He
changed the name, " Hermione," first into " Hermun " and then into
" Herman." When informed that that is a boy's name, he replied, —
" That doesn't matter! You are a real man." (" But that will not
do. I am a woman.") "Yes, but for me you are a man; you are
twice a man, ein Herr-Mann." Here the " imconscious " of the
fatherless child expresses the wish that his " Auntie " shall take the
place of his absent father. The child goes to " Auntie " for advice
on all questions about building houses (with his blocks), about
where to locate his mills and his electrical "works." He says, —
" Mamma does not understand those things." A six-year-old little
girl whose parents lived apart, behaved in a similar manner. She
liked to call Frieda, the nurse-maid, " Fritz." Naturally, the native
bisexuality of the child always comes to expression in such an arbi-
trary change of sexes. Even though the strongest feelings of affec-
tion go out to persons of the opposite sex, yet no person's life is
devoid of warm sentiments toward people of his own sex. The fact
that this habit of bestowing names of men upon feminine persons is
far more common among boys than among girls, and that further-
more, no instance (Fall) is known to me where a child has given a
feminine Christian name to a man or to a boy, has convinced me that
this boy-custom is based upon a subconscious wish to distinguish
the beloved persons whose names he thus alters, by enrolling them
as members of his own privileged sex. This opinion also finds sup-
port in the fact that the attitude assumed by the boy while playing
with several companions of the opposite sex, is different from that
assiuned by a girl under like conditions. The latter feels herself
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404 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
honored and flattered to be taken into the ranks of the boys. The
former, overcome with shame, is apt to run away from even the most
delightful game which he had been playing with little girls, as soon
as he sees himself observed by adults, or, indeed, by other boys.
If the ability to speak, in the case of any given child, has so far
developed that words are caught and retained with relatively little
trouble, the child frequently shows, by some droll manner, that he
looks down upon his own first attempts at speech, and he often re-
fuses to sing any longer the songs which imitate the child's way of
speaking (die Kinder^prache). Preyer's little son,^ when less than
three years old, " called to mind as a subject of merriment, the time
when he could neither speak nor artictdate with exactness." My
nephew for whom R. and M. DehmeFs Rhymes, composed in child
jargon, were a source of much enjoyment when he was in his fourth
year, by the time he had reached his sixth year, would not hear any-
thing about the " stupid stuflF," in which— he said — ** even the chil-
dren could not speak properly/' On the other hand, just at this
stage of life, it gives the child much pleasure to distort and change
about words and sentences, to suit his own ideas. As a part of this
tendency, besides the obviously senseless alteration of sounds at the
beginning and in the middle of words, I include the intentional
twisting of words in a sentence. Ever since the banning of his
sixth year my nephew has been a master of that art To read from
left to right, and to read backward every sign and placard and every-
thing in large print, offers him constant amusement ; and his delight
is particularly great when he comes upon words which, when turned
about either make a new and real word, or else retain their former
meaning and form (English examples, — "evil," "deed"). One of
his first attempts in this line had to do with the word, " Popo," the
letters of which he amused himself by changing about, until at last
laughing heartily he announced, — " If I take away the * o' from the
end and place it at the beginning and then read the word back-
ward, I have * Popo ' again," evidently noticing as he did so, a corre-
spondence between the doubling of the syllables and the form of the
part of the body which the word defines. If upon reading a word
backward, another familiar word having a real meaning comes to
light, then his final purpose seems to have been fulfilled. In many
cases psycho-analysis has succeeded in bringing proof that the so-
called mistakes in reading and writing are to be traced back to re-
pressed motives which frequently bear a sexual meaning. And the
T Preyer, 1. c, p. 233.
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^ MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 405
'^^i^^ surmise is thus forced upon us that in the word-alterations made by
^•iicj^ children below the school-age we have to do with such "mistakes."
ifAtiif^ ^ five-year-old little girl who had been instructed by her mother in
reading, and was laboriously spelling out the word, "schiessen,"
suddenly broke into loud laughter, much to her mother's astonish-
ment. Evidently the child's interest in learning and her interest in
sexual matters had met each other half-way, with the result that
by transposition of the vowels, she could persuade herself that she
had found in the book a vulgar expression which she did not dare to
let her mouth speak. Sully says," — " In the children's ' word-play '
(Wortspiel), as we call it, namely in their discovery of strange sim-
ilarities in the sounds of words, also in the puns which children
make, Ihere is often concealed the wish to get behind the meaning
of the words. Although this tendency implies, without doubt, a
genuine element of infantile humor, yet it also indicates a more
serious bent, ». e., an interest in the word-sounds as such." A child
may know that in such cases he is making nonsense, nevertheless,
just playing with the words brings a certain satisfaction, and of a
sort that even the adult linguist can appreciate. In my opinion the
word-plays of the three-and-a-half-year-old little girl to whom Sully
refers have a deeper significance than that which the author ascribes
to them. For example, " Zuckerrosin " for " Superoxyd," " Auto-
mate" for "Tomate," "Grobiate" for "Krawatte," and "ver-
brecherischer Kopf" for " zerbrechlicher Kopf" (the breakable
head of the doll) are all substitutions which imply very special
thought-associations on the child's part. This habit of playing with
words is found particularly among those intelligent chiWren upon
whom early education has imposed restrictions for which " the little
people " do not understand the reason. In the school this habit ac-
quires a new impetus and finds an especially good chance to grow
when foreign languages are being studied. For in them there is no
lack of words which, when pronounced as in German, voice for-
bidden expressions.
Finally, I should like to mention the charming word-formations
(Wprtbildungen) and combinations in which the poetical feeling and
the inventive genius of childhood find expression. It goes without
saying that it is the emotional life of the child that is the controlling
factor in this outcome. A little girl four years and nine months old
called her mother, " Friihlingssiiss " (sweet as Spring).* And
• Sully, L c., p. 159.
• C. u. W. Stem, Kindersprache, p. 353.
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406 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
Ament reports in r^^rd to a little boy, " R,'' three years and nine
months old, that when he climbed on his father's lap to caress him,
the child said he ''had loved himself up (hinaufgeliebt)" on to his
father. Naturally, interest in matters sexual (das sexuelle Inter-
esse) is a rich source of new acquisitions on these lines. A four-
year-old boy calls his four-months-<Jd little sister, " Lutschkind,"
and his mother who is nursing her, "Lutschmami" (lutschen=to
suck). The same boy calls his little cousin's milk-bottle, ''a little
mamma-bottle " ( Mamiflaschl) . He calls the gardiai-hose, " a Wiwi-
macher for the flowers." It is true that in the infantile stock of
words quoted by Preyer and other authors, not a single expression
is to be found belonging to the sex category (Gebiet). By means
of the filter of science they have been purified from the sediment of
childish originality, in so far as this has occupied itself with objec-
tionable fields of thought. And even E. and G. Scupin are content
with offering the following — ^"Bauchkn6pper'= navel, as invented
by the child in his third year ; " Hinterbauchel " = buttocks, " Backe "
= Wange (cheek) but also breast, "Klastieder'=Klystier
= enema, between his fourth and sixth year; unfortunately there
are no remarks here, either, about any thoughts to which he gave
utterance in regard to these concepts (tiber diese Begriflfe). At
three and a half years of age, my nephew invented the expression,
"Popowadeln" for Gesass (buttocks), and "anmuttem" for nesr
tling very close to mother — from which expression he soon coined
"antanten" and "anherminen" for "cuddling up to auntie." In
his sixth year it was a custom between him and myself that, at twi-
light, upon hearing a signal agreed upon between us, he was to con-
sider that he had permission to come into my room to romp. As
soon as he heard the invitation, he used to stop his play and rush to
me. Once, after having had a paritcularly merry time together in
the forenoon, he came hastening to me at the given signal, calling
out as he did so, — "I fly to Aunt Hermine's embrace 1" (lit. = to
Hermine's body). At about that time he invented a game where he
clung to me with his arms and legs, and I had to shake him off. His
too intense interest in this sport soon led me, however, to discon-
tinue it. When I had been disturbed by him several times while I
was at work, and I wanted to buy myself free from him by means
of a few bonbons, he announced to his mother, — ^"Auntie H —
sugared me away." No nursery is without such manufactured
words, spontaneously invented by the child. They owe their ex-
istence to his sexual-erotic feelings, and it would be a worthy task
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 407
to keep (a list) of such expressions, and to trace out their mode of
origin in the emotional life of the child.
While the adult very often uses language as a means of con-
cealing his feelings, it serves in childhood as a faithful exponent of
them. Even to the small child speech is a means which he can use to
pay back in like coin the energetic attempts of people about him to
guide his linguistic efforts. With amazing keenness and "Konse-
quenz " he observes the inaccuracies and peculiarities in the speech-
habits of adults, and takes advantage of every opportimity to offer
corrections. Thus, a five-year-old boy who had often been criticized
on account of his saying "nit" for "not" ("net" fur "nicht")
repeatedly protested, in the case of his grandmother, against her
giving " zuerscht " for " zuerst." With a somewhat spiteful pleas-
ure he used to listen with care for this her habitual mistake, and
even the most intense absorption in play could not keep him from
noting the faulty pronunciation. I recall a lady's telling me how
carefully she used to watch the chance to note occasional slips of
speech on her parents' part, and that she was the more inclined to
do this, because criticisms of like nature had been made so often by
her father in regard to herself ; and she described how it was only
the extreme severity of her parents that kept her from openly cor-
recting their mistakes. But to hold oneself thus in check induces, in
connection with other factors, a habit of nagging (fault-finding)
which, in later years, comes into use, not for the correction of
speech-habits alone, but with reference to other matters also. Again,
with witty people (bei witziger Veranlagung) this repression de-
velops an irresistible impulse to imitate the speech — or any peculiar-
ity — of other people, and make them seem ridiculous.
In the mental life of children a peculiar significance attaches to
the relations (Beziehungen) between grammatical gender (the gen-
ders of words) and natural gender, that is, sex distinction ; this, to
be sure, does not come into special prominence until school-days
arrive, but plays a certain part even before the " school-age." As a
charming illustration and proof of this interest, Sully offers^® the
fanciful speculations of a boy of five years and three months, " who
had learned German and Italian, as well as English, and had in-
dulged in many thoughts about the gender (sex) of the sun, of the
moon, etc. He next began to evolve myths in the following manner :
'I think the people (the Italians) believe that the sun (il sol) is the
man, and the moon (la luna) is the woman (wife), and all the stars
10 Sully, 1. c, p. 160.
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408 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
arc little children/" In my opinion relative size (Grosscnverhalt-
niss), illuminating power (Leuchtkraft), and splendor (Glanz,
luminosity) may have some influence in the assignment of these
roles.
The psychological observations made with reference to the
speech-habits of children who have employed two languages from
earliest childhood, are of special interest. Such children tend to
create a mongrel language which they use when they consider the
expressions of the other two as unsuitable for social use. Thus, a
four-year-old little girl, when in the presence of strangers, used to
her nurse-maid the sound-imitation (onomatopoetic) word " suivi,"
in order to indicate the imperative nature of her needs. Another
little girl employed the terms " much " and " little " for summoning
her nurse to assist her in these necessary acts (Verrichtungen). The
popular periphrases, "number one" and "number two," for what
are known (among children) as "little" and "big" "jobs" (Ge-
schafte), also deserve mention here. In such a use of words it is
not only possible to recognize without difficulty the root of the secret
languages of later youth, but also the root of the habit which adults
have of choosing a foreign term for alluding to objectionable sub-
jects — ^to sexual matters, for example. Indeed, in scientific parlance
it is the custom to refer to sexual processes (Vorgange) by Latin
expressions, although there is no lack of suitable designations for
them in our own tongue.
VII. The Emotional Life (Das Gemutsleben)
The intellectual development of the child stands in such intimate
relation to his emotional life (Gemutsleben) that no student of
childhood, whatever his method of approach, could fail to recognize
the importance of dealing with the two in close conjunction. Nature
has indeed bestowed her most precious gift upon little children in
giving them, even in earliest infancy, the power to intensify the
value of every experience by clothing it with feeling and emotion.
The same influences which excite in the nursling the most primitive
sentiments — those of surprise and fear — cause in the older child
the whole scale of emotions, pleasant and unpleasant, in the strength
which is so characteristic of all the reactions of early youth. The
child endows the people and things around him — indeed, all Nature
— with feelings in which his own personality is reflected- Many of
these projected feelings are of a sort that might provoke criticism
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MENTAL LIFE OP THE CHILD 409
if entertained by the adult, but they do not disturb us in the young
child because with him they are instinctive and virtually unconscious-.
The child loves whatever promises him pleasure, hates what with-
holds it from him, and all that is negative in these respects he lets
pass unnoticed. This egocentric attitude toward the world — ^taken
together with the great impressionability of the emotions — ^provides
conditions favorable to the occurrence of strong reactions on the
child's part, to all the experiences of life. And it is in the mental
atmosphere created by this attitude (Weltauffassung) that the de-
velopment must go on, of the child's natural instincts (Triebleben),
and of his will. The insatiable craving for affection proceeds also
from the same instinctive attitude — ^a craving which, in its turn, be-
comes the starting point of a long line of childhood-failings and
weaknesses, perhaps, indeed, of all of them. The egocentric atti-
tude prompts the child to claim a peculiar place in the heart of the
person loved, and to fight for the position, once it is secured, with all
the weapons which not only love but also hate, place at his disposal.
This demand for manifestations of affection is felt by different
children in different degrees. The " only " child, for example, reacts
quite differently from the child who has younger brothers and sis-
ters, and the younger children of a family in different fashion from
the older. It is natural for the " only ** child to consider the over-
measure of love and care, lavished upon him from the very first day,
as only lawful tribute. It is natural for him, indeed, to set himself
up as tyrant over the whole house, and to look for responses to his
desire for marks of love, even where, in the natural order of things,
he would find little encouragement — for instance, among servants
and strangers. Failure on their part to respond adequately to his
expectations causes him severe disappointment, which is easily over-
come, to be sure, thanks to the mobility of the very young child's
mind. A compensation for such disappointments is supplied, first,
by an intensification of the child's attachment to his father and
mother, then through a gradually increasing comprehension of the
fact, which even the most " spoiled " child may learn, that modera-
tion in demonstrations of affection is better than excess. Far more
deplorable than that of the " spoiled " child, is the fate of the child
who in his early years has had too little reason to feel himself the
object of love. For this sort of deprivation in childhood no man's
love and no wife's affection can adequately compensate. Such chil-
dren often remain love-poor all their lives ; they know not what love
means. They seek in vain, through later years, for the companion
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410 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
who shall make up to them for the parent-love which they have
never known. The woman who was never taught by her mother
how to love, cannot learn this high art in later years. The poets,
whose privilege it is to appreciate better than other men the mys-
terious stirrings of the repressed emotions, have understood also
the lamentable fate of the child left without a mother and have
clothed the sufferings of the tender young soul in the garment of
song — ^in such songs, for instance, as those which Albert Tracer
has given us, and of which his " Das Kind hat keine Mutter mehr ''
is a good example.
The myths of all races make it clear that the love of the son for
the mother tends indeed to become so powerful, without his con-
scious realization of the intenseness of his emotion, that nothing can
restrain him from striving to possess her for himself. And, by the
same token, he tends also, unconsciously to look upon his father as
a dangerous rival only through whose death [i. e., permanent ab-
sence] he can gain that unrestrained access to the attentions of his
mother, his first love, which he had so much desired. This glowing
thread of emotional desire to possess the mother, and of concealed
hostility toward the father as a rival, runs through the fairy-tales
of all tongues ; and young people listen breathlessly to these stories
just because these impulsive cravings and emotions still exist in
them (although made unrecognizable through repression due to the
influence of custom and the conventions of society), and link the
children, as listeners, to their own parents by strong, undefined ties.
The boy's most natural thought is to marry his mother in case his
father should die, and the little girl enjoys playing the role of
" mother " when the latter happens to be away from home. In his
" Traumdeutung " ("Dream-Interpretation") Freud gives the fol-
lowing story in illustration of this tendency:* — ^"A particularly
gifted and vivacious little girl, less than four years old, a child in
whom this bit of child-psychology is remarkably transparent, ex-
presses her thoughts boldly in this fashion, — * Now mother can go
away, if she likes ; then father-dear must marry me, and I shall be
his wife.' " It indicates a slight recognition of conventional barriers
when a five-year-old boy says, — "My wife must look just like
mother." Another boy shows his feeling toward his mother by the
following suggestion : — " Mamma, if you had a little girl, too, and
she didn't live with us, then I could marry her ; but I should want
her to look exactly like you." With a child who thus expresses him-
1 Freud, Traumdcutung, III. Aufl., p. 187.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 4II
self, it is evident that the inhibitory feeling associated unconsciously
with the idea of incest, as wrong, has already taken root so deeply
that he no longer wishes to marry his mother, nor yet his sister with
whom he has grown up, but "mother's little girl" who resembles
her in every respect. Remarks made by adults, now and then, to the
eflfect that one should not desire one's parents, and brothers, or sis-
ters, in marriage, are taken in by the infantile mind and worked over,
though without its being brought to pass, for all that, that the clutch
of the deeper-seated emotional longings becomes loosened. An-
other instance of the recognition of social restrictions is that shown
by a four-year-old little girl who chooses for her future husband
her uncle on her father's side, " because he looks every inch like papa
— ^and papa already has mamma for his wife."
Another noteworthy situation is the following : Owing to the un-
questionable fact that a bi-sexual tendency is characteristic of all
human beings during the period of childhood, the child's affection
goes out strongly, not only to the parent of the opposite sex but to
that of the same sex with itself, and here also there is an undertone
of sensuous feeling.* The wish of the little boy to become very
soon as big, and tall, and strong as his father, although based in
part on the unconscious, instinctive desire to gain the father's place
with reference to the mother, betrays also an admiration for him,
for in the eyes of the boy no man is so powerful as his father.
In analogous fashion, the affection which goes out to the mother
from the small daughter often takes on a romantic coloring, to which
a liberal dose of envy of other children is sometimes superadded,
concerning advantages which their mothers are supposed to enjoy.
It is certainly a severe blow to the child's pride to hear an ulnfa-
vorable criticism of her mother's clothes. But another reaction to
an experience of this kind is quite possible, and an entirely different
chord may be struck, a chord having a note of tender child-like love.
This is illustrated by the case of a Httle girl who sat musingly for a
long time, refusing to eat her supper, and finally said, — " Mamma,
how long should we have to economize, for you to be able to buy
yourself as nice a dress as B — 's mother has?"
If it happens that a child does not receive, in early years, its
due share of its mother's love and care, either because the mother
dies, or because she thoughtlessly entrusts her most sacred duty to
others, the result is that it turns, with all the impetuousness of its
*This tendency is primarily, and in itself, not objectionable but rather
fortunate. — (Trans.)
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412 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
lovc-ncedy heart, to the person, whoever it may be, on whom its
care devolves — ^preference falling on a grandmother or an aunt
"The home conditions," writes Goltz,* "needed for ensuring the
best outcome of a childhood cannot be considered as completely fur-
nished, unless to the other influences there is added that of a grand-
mother or an aunt" But even for those children in whose early
days a kind grandmother or an aunt is at hand to meet and gratify
the innumerable wishes of her dear charges, it is still the mother
who furnishes the model and pattern with reference to which the
later bestowals of affection are determined. Nevertheless, inter-
mingled with her traits and lineaments, place is found, likewise, in
this idealized vision, for those of the various people who gave evi-
dence of that love which every child longs for from its mother but
sometimes longs in vain.
It is also of supreme importance for the development of the
child's emotional life, in what sort of relation he stands to the other
members of his family. Freud sketches out, in his " Tratundeutung/'
in a few convincing words, how little evidence there is of real affec-
tion in the conduct (attitude) of brothers and sisters toward each
other, during their early years ; how much more nearly, on the con-
trary, it suggests the warfare of unequally matched opponents,
marked as it is (in part) by aggressive hostility on the one side and
impotent rage on the other.
These feelings of hostility arise considerably earlier than that
period of life when the language of the fists becomes so eloquent.
They date back, with the older child, to the day when the undesired
addition to the family appeared, the day when he saw himself thrust
out of his place of primary importance in the household. Sully^
tells of a little girl who was seized by such a violent aversion to an
infant whom she thought extremely ugly that she tried to dash its
head to pieces. Since the author brings forward this example of
cruelty as an appendage to his observations on the child's behavior
up<Mi the arrival of a second infant (refusal to accept it, etc.), wc
may assume that it was a small brother or sister toward whom this
little girl's hatred was directed. But, in that case, it cannot be ad-
mitted that the new baby's ugliness was the cause of the hatred ; on
the contrary, the thought of the baby's looking like such a fright
must have sprung from the hatred. This sort of aversion is an ex-
ceedingly common one; it rests on the natural dislike felt for the
• Goltz, L c p. 389.
* Sully, L c, p. 203.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 413
infant through whom the older child feels himself defrauded of his
rights and privileges as regards the parents' love. That same hostile
frame of mind — according to Sully* — ^incited a boy (of whom he
speaks) to set fire to the cradle in which his little dead sister lay ;
and this observation is important because it illustrates the true child-
hood conception of death, namely, that being " dead " is equivalent
to being at a distance, being ** away." As long as the boy sees the
body of his sister lying in the cradle, she — ^his rival — does not seem
to him to be finally and sufficiently removed ; but, from having been
forbidden to set things on fire, he knows that what has been burned
up, is lost, is gone. In such behavior of children jealousy breaks
out undisguised without our being able to declare that a criminal
tendency takes any part in it. Tiedemann's little son,* at the age of
one and a half years, betrayed strong jealousy toward his little sister ;
'* he wanted to strike her whenever she lay in her cradle or on the
nK>ther's lap, because he found it exceedingly unpleasant to see him-
self deprived of a satisfaction which he had so long enjoyed exclu-
sively. On the other hand, he showed sympathy by crying when his
sister cried." This seems a mark of real commiseration, but, to my
thinking, it does not appear suitable to ascribe such altruistic feel-
ings to a child a year and a half old. I should say, rather, that,
beside the factor of imitation (which is of great importance, just at
this age), another influence comes into play here; namely, the un-
conscious over-compensation of the sense of hostility through exag-
gerated demonstrations of affection. Thus little Gtinter Stem,^ who,
moved by jealousy, sought to draw his mother's attention to himself
while his little sister Eva was being nursed, went soon afterward
to the opposite extreme in expressing admiration of his rival. It
should not surprise us when children who had made no attempt to
disguise their antipathy toward a brother or a sister who had figured
as an interloper, show signs of the tenderest love before much time
has passed. Hatred and love spring from a common stalk — from
self-love. The primary hostile impulse to thrust back anything new
and unexpected, when it threatens to oppose the gratification of ego-
istic feelings, tends to be replaced by the exalted feeling — ^flattering
to self-love — of being absolutely necessary as performing spon-
taneous acts of love; while, at the same time, the joy at being loved
by the tiny, helpless infant awakens in the older child a tenderness, a
* Sully, L c., p. 208.
* Tiedemann, 1. c, p. 31.
V Stem, Kindersprache, p. 108.
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414 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
solicitude, which has in it something touching. The fact that these
busy, affectionate doings arouse emotion in us who watch them can
have no other meaning than that instinctively we recognize in them
the victory of love over the original hatred.
The presence of hostile feelings in the older child is especially
noticeable when the arrival of the new baby, besides causing the
withdrawal from him of a portion of the parental attention, leads
to the imposition on him of new tasks, of one or another sort, for
which his will and training are inadequate. To illustrate : — ^A four-
year-old peasant boy is made to rock his small sister in a baby-
carriage, she being but a few months old. He meets this inter-
ference with his freedom with very ill grace, and suggests to his
mother, " Mother, take Ella and sell her ; we have no use for her."*
But some months later he was of wholly different mind, and said,
when his own plan was suggested to him, — " No, not now ! Now
she can play ; now I like her." This repression of the original jeal-
ousy between children of different ages is of almost regular oc-
currence ; but it is also true that the hateful feeling — ^retained in part
— ^is likely to break out with violence on this or that occasion. For
many children the very thought of the approaching arrival of a little
brother or sister is so exciting that they threaten to throw the child
into the water, or else " to put the baby under the bed," the place
where the child tucks away unpleasant objects, out of sight A
charming illustration of the way in which a child who feels himself
deposed tries to win back the love and attention of people around
him, and in particular that of the mother, has been given by Lichten-
berger in his " La petite soeur de Trott." The little lad of this story,
forced into the backgroimd by his small sister, intentionally hurts
himself by letting himself fall from a chair ; but then, when caressed
by his parents, he admits, while weeping, — from pain and for joy, —
" I did it on purpose." And when his parents show that they realize
how cruelly he suffered during the time when they seemed to neglect
him, and now assure him of their love, and ask him whether he is
satisfied, he replies — ^with eyes still red from crying, but with laughter
*On the street, not long ago, one of the translators happened to pass
close by an American boy about five years of age. He was taking care of
a baby asleep in its carriage. The infant did not even move its lips. Sud-
denly the older child began to imitate the crying of a very young baby. As
suddenly the mother came and relieved him of his charge, saying as she
did so, — ** I never go into the house but the baby cries." Apparently mother
had no suspicion of the trick played on her, and the unwilling little " helper "
(?) won his freedom easily.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 415
on his lips — " O yes, but I'm not sorry that I hit myself and got the
big bump." The little peasant boy, too, of whom I spoke a moment
since, used a method which he evidently thought would be a sure
one, for regaining his mother's attentions. Although he had been
trained to habits of cleanliness, and had maintained them for more
than a year, he began, after the birth of his little sister, to set his
teaching at naught, in spite of well-justified fear of punishment for
so doing. His mother, although a very simple-minded woman, in-
stinctively divined the boy's real motive, though without giving him
the credit for its invention. "I don't know what I shall do with
him," she complained. " Beating does no good, and I truly believe
he means to pay me back, because since the baby takes all my time,
I have none left for him." Unfortunately I had no opportunity to
observe, later, whether the method of kindly admonition which, by
my advice, was substituted for punishment, had any permanent
effect, or only a passing influence due to novelty.
It often happens that the younger child becomes the warm and
admiring follower of the older one as soon as the latter has over-
come or repressed his feelings of hostility. Indeed, the older child's
words are often clothed with more authority, for the younger brother
or sister, than those of the grown-ups, even of the parents. In his
older sister the boy feels that he has "a bit of mother." To the
little girl the more mature brother is a second (an extra) father and
has the advantage, from the fact of his relative nearness in age and
his familiarity with the childish range of ideas, of .standing consid-
erably closer to his little sister than her own father does. One might
expect that, on this account, the younger of two such children would
entertain for the older a feeling of pure love, free from jealousy and
hostility. But to arrive at this conclusion would be to overlook the
fact that whatever comes to the older child simply on the strength of
his earlier start in life, seems to the younger child as one more mark
of preference on the parents' part. How many tears it costs the
younger children to have to go to bed before their older brothers
and sisters. At table, the younger children are quick to take notice
of the size of the portions of the favorite dishes, as meted out to
each little member of the family. The giving of a larger piece of
bread and butter to the older child often occasions a cry of indigna-
tion and the scornful rejection of one's own slice. Everyone who
has been much in a nursery knows well with how much envy in his
heart a child can struggle for a toy to which he had but recently been
indifferent Envy is a real factor in the act of distinguishing be-
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4l6 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
tween Mine and Thine. To be forced to wear articles of outgrown
clothing which have come down from older children in the family is
a constant source of deep suffering to the heart of the child. Every
child feels proud to be decked out in a dress taken from its mother's
wardrobe, or in the trousers belonging to one of its father's suits,
and so, by contrast, an intense feeling of mortification is felt when
it is compelled to wear a garment which has been a brother's or a
sister's. Only those who have themselves been in similar situations,
know how to estimate the amount of suffering, of humiliation that
a child may feel under such conditions. The school-child who must
take over his brother's or his sister's books, year after year, also ex-
periences this same feeling of mortification. Many a case of lack
of zeal for learning is to be attributed to such economy on the part
of the parents. To practice it is an educational blunder, and one of
which the effects can easily be underrated. Parents who have in-
sight carefully avoid showing partiality when giving presents, even
if unable to do so when it comes to articles of daily use, like wearing-
apparel, etc. To the infantile comprehension equal values in gifts
mean an equal measure of love. For by his holiday gifts the child
gauges the degree and warmth of his parents' love for him. Since
he has not as yet an adequate knowledge of real values, the number
of presents given him serves him as a means of judging whether or
not he enjoys his fair and proper share of the giver's favor. Three
children of my acquaintance, a girl and two boys, between seven and
four years old, and belonging to the same family, have been acccs-
tomed to exercise an exact control of the distribution of gifts, at
Christmas time and other holidays, in order to make sure that the
principle of equality is observed. The being remembered with gifts
is in itself a holiday pleasure to yotmg people. In that matter youth
is insatiable, for to be given presents signifies to be loved. This fact,
that the child's world of thought and world of feeling are egocentric,
explains why the ethical significance of the Bible text, — '* It is more
blessed to give than to receive" remains incomprehensible to him
for so long a time. The failure to comprehend this idea seems to
stand in contradiction to the feeling of joy which the child shows
even early in life, when he has the chance to give gifts to others.
But when it is remembered that the child does not hesitate to de-
mand again the thing that he has just voluntarily offered to some-
one, it becomes clear that it is only the evidences of love for himself
that he is really concerned about, and he takes it as a matter of
course that he ought to be paid back in the same coin ; or, in other
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 4I7
words, that the gift should be actually or virtually restored to him.
For this reason children prefer to give presents to grown people
rather than to playmates of their own age who do not share their
conceptions of generosity. Even when, through imitation of other
people, and through ethical instruction, the child has learned to part
with better grace from his possessions, nevertheless it usually costs
him a severe struggle to give away toys for the benefit of poor chil-
dren, in spite of the fact that it seems a handsome thing to do so.
The strongest motive for this refusal, however, is not avaricious^
ness, but rather an unrealized association in his mind between the
precious object and the person of the giver. That an association of
this sort, when realized, is strong, is illustrated by an experience with
my nephew, who was unwilling to part with a damaged mill which
had been set up from a cardboard pattern, and said in explanation,
— " No, I will not give that away. Aimtie H — made me that her-
self. I shall keep it forever." A further, and likewise unconscious,
ground for refusal was this ; that the fact of clinging to a toy sig-
nifies to the child-mind the virtual holding fast to a memory-treasure.
Many writers are of the opinion that it comes particularly hard to
" only *' children to give presents ; but to this opinion I cannot sub-
scribe. The natural hostility between brothers and sisters directly
fosters the unwillingness felt by each one to part with his own prop-
erty, while "only" children actually enjoy giving presents — ^per-
haps from the unspoken hope of having them returned, but frequently
from a desire to play a grand role.
The place amongst the children of a family held by those who are
intermediate in age, and especially by the child next to the last, has
also its noteworthy peculiarities. The mental development of such
a child is often unlike that of the rest. He is apt to show a sensitive-
ness and a capriciousness of temper (Launenhaftigkeit) which are
foreign to the normal, healthy child. This tendency is of signif-
icance, and can only be explained on the assumption that the middle
child is crowded out of his place ("als Nesthakchen ") by the child
bom afterward, and yet does not enter into the role of " protector,"
of admired "person in authority," as the older children do. The
middle child has to yield to the wishes of the youngest child and yet
is not reckoned as among the "grown-ups," the "big" children. In
short, the middle child does not receive from either side the signs
of affection which he would like and which he feels himself justified
in claiming ; and he pays back this lack, or imagined lack, of affec-
tionateness by being disagreeable.
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4l8 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
The relationship, both jealous and tender, which we have becwne
acquainted with as subsisting between twin children — even in their
first year — continue to exist in the later years of childhood. Twin
children are inseparable playmates, and quite often withdraw from
the companionship of other children. 0>mpayrc tells us* of twins
who thought out for themselves a language all their own, which
other people could not understand. If the twin children are of dif-
ferent sex, then the boy's desire to dominate comes out ever more
strongly, but along with this there always go signs of tender, pro-
tecting care — as of the man for the woman. Then, also, at a stage
in development where true sympathy in joy and sorrow is foreign to
the lives of other children, in the case of twins we find those emo-
tions clearly in evidence. I have notes about such a pair of children
who, while making their grandmother a visit, had to sleep in separate
rooms. Both children complained, each one saying that it would be
impossible to go to sleep without the presence of the other. At last
the boy overcame his fear of the darkness, but although the house
was strange to him, he tried to get into his sister's room ** so that
Emma might not be afraid." The custom of dressing twins alike,
either all their lives or at any rate as long as possible, may materially
strengthen this feeling of belonging to each other. Indeed, in indi-
vidual cases, it may give rise to the thought that to wear the same
kind of clothing is the distinctive mark of the twinship. Sully illus-
trates this^® by the following amusing story: — A pair of twins, — a
boy and a girl, — ^had always been dressed alike, but after a time the
boy was put into a distinctively boy's suit Soon after this, a lady
asked the little girl whether she and her brother were not twins,
whereupon the child replied, — " No, we were."
The need which all human beings feel of establishing bonds of
intimate companionship makes itself apparent even in earliest child-
hood, and the satisfying of the gregarious instinct counts for one of
the strongest influences in the development of character. In the
small child the social impulse is expressed through his crying when
alone. In the service of this impelling desire for companionship
with others, the child's budding imagination endows inanimate things
in his environment with life and understanding. The power of
phantasy thus secures comradeship for the child when he is alone and
keeps him from becoming bored. But phantasy, rich as it is, cannot
provide the child with an environment really warm with life, cannot
• Compayrd, L c, p. 310
" Sully, L c, p. 156.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 4I9
give him a plasrmate having wishes and thoughts other than those
which are peculiar to himself ; imagination cannot grant him a com-
rade diflferent from himself and yet one who enters into every game
with him and joins him enthusiastically in every kind of prank. For
that reason the "only" child remains lonely at heart. Or if he
finds mates of his own age, it is difficult for him to feel at ease in
their company because they do not show recognition of the fact that
there is something that makes his position, even theoretically, dif-
ferent from theirs ; it is as hard for him to adapt himself to other
people as it is for the " favorite " child to do so, and that, just on ac-
count of the over-measure of parental love which he has had at
home. The disposition of such a child as this, one who is accus-
tomed to rule and who will not forego his privilege, becomes unbear-
able after a time and he develops a tendency to obstinacy which em-
bitters many an hour. The child who grows up among brothers and
sisters approaches stranger playmates in a far happier spirit and
in a more natural manner. On the one hand, the ability to adjust
one's self to other people and the willingness to subordinate one's
own interests ; on the other hand, an early developed individuality ;
— these are the qualities which serve as the best means for cementing
an enduring child-friendship. But that volatile amiability which
leads some children to strike up friendships with anyone and every-
one, only to break them as quickly as they were formed, is not to
be looked upon and welcomed as only another sign of the tem-
peramental mobility so characteristic of childhood. On the contrary,
it is very often an indication of emotional unrest, the expression of
a deep-seated and insistent tendency to resist the making of per-
manent attachments (Sadger)."
No bond of friendship between children is without tfie sexual
note. Indeed, this influence rivets friendships and tempers them
like steel, just because it gives occasion for the consciousness of hav-
ing secrets shared in common, and for the unconscious recognition
of a certain sense of guilt, mutually experienced. It is not gross
sexual offences that come most often into play, under these con-
ditions ; the mere interchange of ideas about the various organs of
the human body and their functions is something that has a strong
attraction for children, and this is enough. In the earliest years of
childhood it is the processes of digestion, in riper years the sexual
function, which most often gives occasion for the whispering and
tittering well known to every mother. And then the varied games
^1 Sadger, Belastung u. Entartung.
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420 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
which have a sexual note — games in which it is a sort of mark of
intimacy to join — ^lead frequently, in the case of younger children, to
handling each others' bodies and so gratifying, at once, the infantile
pleasure in exhibitionism, and the "peeping" impulse [Schau-
lust] . But these facts by no means justify anyone in inferring moral
depravity in the child. It is only that, for him, these primitive and
important functions connected with life are not encircled as y^ by
that wall of conventionality to peer over which is considered as so
shocking. Even at the period when education has stimulated the
growth of modesty and disgust (Ekel), these sentiments are not
strong enough to crowd out of the child's mind the sex-interests with
which nature has endowed him and which are bound to assert them*
selves in despite of his esthetic feelings.
The erotic craving in the child, the desire which strives mightily
for satisfaction within the limits set by nature, brings to maturity
that passionate admiration for adults which differs in no way from
the love felt by grown people, save for the fact that the sexual-act is
lacking. Habits of cuddling, kissing, caressing — ^as manifestations
of affection — ^yes, even the indulgence in sulking, as a sign of tem-
porary disapproval, are characteristic alike of children and adidts.
The child selects his objects of love just as the grown-up person
does, but bestows affection at first without regard to sex. Little
boys admire and love men as well as women ; little girls readily give
their love to a member of their own sex, if only the prime condition
is fulfilled, that is, if the favored person shows one or another of
the traits that are characteristic of their father or their mother, or
else is free from the traits or peculiarities which the child has dis-
liked in her parents. It is something more than a superficial asso-
ciation that inclines children — ^as Aristotle noted — ^to address all men
as " father " and all women as " mother " ; children, indeed, in their
simplicity, expect love from every person who approaches them, and
are ready to regard every man as really a loving father, and every
woman as a tender mother. My nephew, who looked at the matter
in this way, when from three to five years of age, had such
** mothers " in four places, women whom he designated as ** Mami "
with the family name prefixed ("Meyer Mami," "Egger Mami,"
etc) in order to make a fine distinction between them and his be-
loved " Mutti." The so-called " child-love," toward persons of the
same sex, certainly contains a sexual element of slight amount
That this is so is recognized even by untaught people of primitive
instincts ; and with a keen sense for the truth, popular terminology
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 421
chooses the word "verliebt" (in love with) to describe the erotic
feeling of the child for the adult. Psycho-analytic investigators
have confirmed the accuracy of this judgment formed by the
"homely" folk-mind; and they arrived at this conclusion in the
course of their attempts to explain the failure of homosexual pa-
tients to "make good" in their love-life, because of the special
nature of their erotic experiences in early infancy. It appears,
namely, that persons who have this tendency to become too strongly
attached to others of their own sex, followed the right course — as
children — in departing from their primary attitude of indiflFerence
(bi-sexual) in the bestowal of their affections, but failed in that
they were unable to form definite attachments to persons of the sex
opposite to their own. The concern which a widow feds, that it
may be bad for her son's development to remain exclusively under
feminine influence; her anxiety lest he become a "mother's boy"
and not a "boy's boy," contains a more rational element than that
which finds expression in the justifiable fear that the boy may out-
grow his mother's guidance, and may suffer for lack of a stronger
hand. In fact, an unconscious long^g for the father lies so deep
in the heart of such a boy, that long after he has grown up, the un-
appeased yearning still remains with him. In such a case as this, the
unsatisfied longing is likdy to lead onward to " inversion,"^' just as
happens in the case of the child who, repulsed by the parent of the
opposite sex, unites himself passionately to the parent of the same
sex. In situations of this last sort, the normal breaking-away from
the too strong influence of the latter parent, at the proper time, is
not always successful. But the ultimate effect of an exclusivdy
feminine environment upon boys who seek to withdraw themselves
from this influence by making a direct change in their environment,
is often to induce in them an unconscious aversion to women in gen-
eral, which, even though it does not appear upon the surface and is
not distinctly recognized by them may, nevertheless, seriously dis-
turb the social relationships of their maturer years. With the female
sex, similar factors probably have analogous effects. It is therefore
clear that in trying to explain the homosexual tendency, it is not
enough to think of " innate constitution " as its sole cause, but that
the parental-filial relationships, as existing in the individual's early
childhood, must be studied likewise. It is also true, of course, that
disturbances in the relations of the several children of a family to
each other may also have unfortunate results.
^> Excessive love for persons of one's own sex.
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422 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
Every child has a natural fondness for animals. In his early
years he has no feelings of disgust, therefore he likes the worm as
well as he does the butterfly. And since his inborn instinct of gre-
gariousness is at first stronger in him than fear, so far as animals
are concerned, his affections flow out with equal intensity to dogs,
cats, and horses, and to the bears and elephants of the menagerie.
It is natural that the dc^, because of its position of privilege in the
house, should become the child's declared favorite, very early. He
finds in the dog the most faithful and patient of playfellows. The
dog even lets itself be utilized in the service of the childish tendency
to violence and cruelty. The child, by virtue of his mental supe-
riority, feels himself to be the master — and while playing with his
dog, he has no cause to fear being made fun of, nor yet being crossly
repulsed, as often happens when he is in the company of people ; and
even when the patience of the dog is exhausted and it shakes off its
tormentor angrily, nevertheless the child still believes in his right,
as possessor of reason, to rule over the creature that is devoid of it.
It is partly from this consciousness of his own attributes and rights,
this sense of his own superiority, that, indeed, the child's deep love
for animals arises. Shinn's records show^* that the fondness of little
children for animals stands in direct connection with infantile maso-
chism^* [self-subordination] ; and the affection which many children
have for cats, in particular, is perhaps to be traced back to the maso-
chistic tendency. Shinn speaks of her niece, then in her third year,
as follows : — " On one occasion she extended her hand toward a cat
hidden in a clump of bushes, then turned and called out to me, —
* Kittle is scratching me a little.' Then she forced her way into the
bush once more and as I came near her she looked up and added, —
' Kittie is scratching me again.' With that she showed me a second
bloody scratch on her finger. Then she begged, for the third time,
to be allowed to catch the cat." Since children, as a general thing,
manifest a greater sensitiveness to pain after their first year has
passed — ^a sensitiveness which is materially strengthened of course,
through excessive demonstrations of pity on the part of adults, it is
to be inferred that, in cases like the one just cited, that the feeling
of pleasure exceeds that of pain. I myself have retained from ear-
i» Shinn, L c, pp. 223-224; 301.
^* By this it is meant, partly that the child seeks to escape from its own
sense of dependence and weakness through taking an aggressive attitude
toward animals, partly that children experience a certain pleasure, of a strange
but well-attested sort, in suffering pain at their hands. — (Trans.)
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MENTAL LIFE OP THE CHILD 42$
lies! childhood similar memories as to being scratched by cats. In
Shinn's niece, in addition to the masochistic tendency, a strong
sadistic tendency was also shown when she was playing with animals.
Shinn's report of the child's twenty-fourth month, says that a dog
belonging to them had to be sent away because the little girl tor-
mented the creature continually, althoi^h she also let herself be
bitten by it
To take care of animals, to feed them, even to watch a young
generation grow up, gives the child so much pleasure that when live
animals are lacking he lavishes the same care upon toy animals. " If
I cannot have a live Dackel, then buy me a stuflFed one," my nephew
begged of his mother, when he was four years old. The care of
animals signifies to the child a form of play that meets half way his
own sex-interests, his anal-erotism. It is true that worms, flies, etc.,
appear to be destined to serve as victims of infantile cruelty, partly
because, from his earliest days onward, he sees them attacked and
driven away as pests ; also, perhaps, because the expressions of dis-
gust which people about him make, seem to him worthy of imitation.
But certainly, in his first years, the tormenting of animals is asso-
ciated neither with an accurate conception of the pain caused them
nor with an intention to inflict pain. Chasing animals, catching them,
and hindering their freedom of movement, — all such tendencies in-
duce in the child the same sort of pleasure as he feels when adults
play the same sort of games with him. In cases where intentional
torturing of animals appears in the child at a very early age, mental
abnormalities are present which stand outside the boundary-line of
normal responsibility.
As the unconscious impulse to cruelty, without entirely disap-
pearing, is gradually changed to compassion by way of this love for
animals, so upon the soil of the child's affection for his parents and
for his brothers and sisters, both generous and sympathetic .im-
pulses, on the one side, and the sense of jealousy, upon the other,
spring into life and flourish on the same root; and it is also true
that feelings of gratitude germinate in the child's heart, close beside
his insatiable demand for love. With the very little child the ex-
pression of gratitude is not a sign of his expectation of further kind^
nesses, but is the spontaneous manifestation — ^in the outward form
of word and gesture— of a true, warm feeling. E. and G. Scupin
give the following record of their little son in his fifth year of life :*•
— " Bubi is beginning to give proofs, now and then, of being grate-
i» Scupin, L c, II, pp. 151, 213, 217.
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4^4 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
f ul ; for we regard it as a sign of gratitude when the child, after his
mother has told him stories, brings her a toy, and says, — ' Because
you have told me such a lovely story, mother dear, I am going to
make you a present of this/ And only to-day he gave his mother a
still stronger proof of gratitude. He heard her saying (to the cook)
that she was sorry, but she needed a little more grated roll (dry
bread crumbs). Although he was tired of grating dry rolls and was
taking a rest from his labors, Bubi sprang up from his seat, deter-
mined to do his best. He got a roll and the bread-grater and began
his task again. His mother wanted to take the grater away from
him, and said he would better rest himself ; but Bubi affectionately
pushed her back, and said, — 'No, Mamale, because you were so
good to me when I was a tiny baby (Pappekindel), I am going to
grate rolls for you now.' " After Frau Scupin had explained to her
boy, then in his sixth year, about his having grown in her womb, and
had told him how she gave birth to him, and how much pain this
caused her, a moist gleam came into his eyes, and he pressed close
to her ; then suddenly he sprang up with the cry, — ** But now I am
going to build you a beautiful bridge, to make you glad.'* Another
speech of his that breathes childish love and gratitude is reported
from the end of his sixth year: — ^At bed-time — ^the hour when my
four-year-old nephew too, according to his own statement, used to
feel " so tender " — ^little Scupin, after long hesitation, and as if re-
vealing a deep secret, said to his mother, — ** I have been praying to
the dear God that I may always love you both ; and have begged that
the Christ-child may bring more and lovelier presents to you than to
me — things that you like, you know." Such avowals, full of tender-
ness and love, have nothing in common with the studied thanks of
older children, but come from the depths of the unspoiled child-
heart, where, nevertheless, hatred also dwells close beside love. A
fine distinction between love proceeding from gratitude and that aris-
ing merely from a sense of duty toward near relatives, comes out in
the words of little Max: Asked by a visitor which member of the
family he liked best, he replied, — " I love mother because she says
to me, — ' You are my treasure ! ' Then comes Aunt Hermine, be-
cause she pastes so many pattern-sheets (Moddlierbogen) for me
and gives me sweetmeats. Then comes Tante Mina (his great
aunt) ; I like her too— (after a pause) — because, well, because she's
my aunt."
Under the influence of the necessary and still more of the super-
fluous measures taken in the training of children, a good part of the
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 425
spontaneity becomes lost, which is so characteristic of their nature
and so agreeably distinguishes it from the artificial dispositions pro-
duced by our conventional life (Kulturleben). The more the orig-
inality of any given child, is sacrificed to the requirements of edu-
cation (training), the more he is forced to give up his unsophisticated
genuineness, the more deceptive does his play of features become,
and the more frequently does embarrassment — ^the awkward sister
of modesty— deprive his conduct of its naturalness. Under the rigid
niles of conventional modesty the child loses the best of what Nature
has lent him, namely, the spontaneousness of his thinking, feeling,
and acting. It will be objected that there is a great gap between
absolute freedom and machine-like restraint, and that if allowed
some latitude, the child might find ample opportunity for the free
unfolding of his will while gradually accustoming himself to the
conventionalities. But this is only partially correct We are still
far removed from realizing in practice that ideal of education which
aspires to create happy, perfect human-beings (Vollmenschen).
And this aim will remain but a vision, an unattainable goal, so long
as one burdens the child's soul with the task of exercising repres-
sions that are out of proportion to his strength. We call upon the
child much too often to be ashamed of himself, in situations where
his feeling and his common sense can find no reason for shame. The
very young child has neither the sense of modesty nor the sense of
the lack of modesty; and the artificial cultivation of the former
feeling leads it, even at a very early age, to indulge in dissimulation
(Verstellung) as an instinctive method of revenge. Compayr6
characterizes the feeling of modesty as a mysterious kind of instinct
which works constantly for expression, and which is so universal as
to be found even in the mentally defective. In consequence of the
attempt made by parents to arouse this feeling too soon or too
strongly, or — ^what comes to the same thing — to bring about a re-
pression of the normal sexual stirrings and strivings, the child's
mental growth becomes choked in a tangle of rules and prohibitions,
in face of which his native simplicity gets confused and lost. Even
apart from the inconsistencies due to differences in opinion between
the different members of the family, there are so many inherent con-
tradictions in the conventional definitions of "propriety" (Schick-
lichkeit) — which would fain pass for morality (Sittlichkeit) — ^that
the intelligent child cannot but note them. And since punishments,
though they may induce temporary submission, are not able to clear
up the inconsistencies in the commands, the result is that the child is
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426 JAMES J. PUTNAM AND MABEL STEVENS
led to indulge secretly in the fancies and cravings in which he has
learned to find pleasure, while taking care to avoid rebuke by yield-
ing an outward and nominal obedience. The fate of these repressed
cravings may be either of two sorts: they may wait — eternally
vigilant — tmtil the moment when they can break forth tiunultuously,
or they may turn themselves gradually into their opposites (in ihr
Widerspiel), without losing the undertone which was characteristic
of them at the outset. Thus a tendency to cruelty may re-appear,
after a primary repression, in the double guise of compassion — as
for a person who has been maltreated — and of an outspc^en desire
for vengeance — as towards an infiictor of undeserved suffering.
Thus, one sees people who, as children, did not hesitate to torture
animals, grow white with anger and excitement when witnesses of
such a scene. The sentiment which one so frequently hears voiced,
that some form of suffering should be meted out to the persecutor
of animals, similar to that inflicted by him on them, may be regarded
— ^in spite of the apparent justice of the desire — ^as based in part on
the still living but repressed sadism of the speaker. In analogous
fashion, the enviousness of the young child may pass over into a
spirit of generosity, which then, however, betrays its origin and his-
tory by associating with itself a longing for adequate appreciation.
So, too, the childish tendency to tell fantastic stories which are
hardly to be distinguished from lies, passes over into an almost
fanatically scrupulous regard for accuracy. In my opinion, this de-
mand for accuracy rests, however, also, on a strong, instinctive wish
on the child's part, to secure the frankness of those about him, by
means of his own apparent candor — but, naturally, it is, essentially,
with regard to sexual matters that he wants other people to lay
aside reserve. Both of these motives seemed to underlie little Giinter
Stem's fanaticism for *' the truth."** The diary informs us how the
boy let his imagination run riot in picturing family scenes, shortly
after the birth of his little sister; what a lasting impression his
mother's confinement left in his memory, and with what interest he
observed, in all its details, the care taken of the baby. The more in-
tense the primary excitement has been, the more strongly this over-
compensation is developed. All these apparently unconscious trans-
formations of forbidden desires into their opposites, in childhood,
are, in reality, affairs of more or less conscious dissimulation. To
the child who does not yet conq)rehend what "moral conduct"
means, and who is therefore without the inner satisfaction which
*• C. u. W. Stern, Erinnerung, Aussage u. Luge, p. 122.
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MENTAL LIFE OF THE CHILD 427
comes from doing right, the so-called bad qualities promise greater
gain in pleasure (Lustgewinn), even when punishment follows the
enjoyment, than "being good" (Bravsein) can oflFer. Since this is
so, as long as there are children in the world, the " bad " element in
the child's make-up will always bear away the palm of victory over
the " good " — and the more so that most forms of punishment, such
as whippings, imprisonment in closets or dark rooms, etc., are apt
to carry with them a certain note of pleasure. Of course blows hurt ;
but psychoanalytic investigation has demonstrated that when they
are applied to certain erogenous zones (as in ''spanking") blows
may excite libidinous feelings especially in the case of predisposed
children. Finally, the fact should not be overlooked that the maso-
chistic endowment^^ of many children causes (bedingt) a veritable
revelling on their part, both in the suffering of punishment and in
" begging pardon," which is so frequently required of them. A five-
year-old boy who was often severely chastised by his father, ad-
mitted, — " The beating hurts me very much ; but when father is kind
again, because I have begged his pardon, then I do not want to go
to bed at night, I am so happy." Quite often, the auto-sadistic
factor comes into play, under the form of what counts as a sense of
justice. Thus, little Scupin when he feels himself guilty of a slight
offence, volimtarily puts himself in a comer, as if to anticipate, per-
haps also to disarm, his mother's blame. When the violence-craving
instinct (sadism) is prominent, flagrant defiance is the usual re-
action to punishment ; and stubbornness makes the acquiescence in a
request for reconciliation the hardest sacrifice which a child can
offer.
(To be continued,)
^^ Tendency to find satisfaction in submissiveness. — (Trans.)
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ABSTRACTS
IMAGO
Zeitschrift f tir die Anwendung der Psychoaxialyse
auf die Geisteswissenschaf ten
(Vol. II, No. s)
Abstsacted by Louisk Bunk, AB.
new yoik, n. y.
1. Early Religion. Lou ANDREAS-SALOMi.
2. The Art of Andreas del Sarto and the Influence of His Wife.
Ernest Jones.
3. The Origin of the Artistic Inspiration. Oskar Pfistes.
4. The True Nature of the Child Psyche, Edited by H, v. Hug-Hell-
MUTH. I, The Qiildhood Memories of Baron de la Motte Fouqu^.
Emil Franz Lorenz. II, From the Life of Guy de Maupassant
Th. Reik. Ill, Claire Henrika Weber: "Liddy." v. Hug-Hell-
MUTH. IV, Mother Love. S. Spielrein. V, Alfred Machard:
" The Hundred Urchins." Werner Klette. VI, Louis Pergaud :
"The War of the Buttons Romance of My Twelfth Year."
Werner Klette. VII, Dostojewski, "Njetotschka Neswanowa,"
A Fragment of a Romance. J. Harnik. VIII, Multatuli on the
Desire for Knowledge. Contributed by O. Rank.
I. Early Religion. — ^The author gives a unique bit of personal experi-
ence in her childish conception of God and its place in the child's attitude
toward the world surrounding it. She can remember definitely but little
in her early infantile human relations out of which her picture of God
may have arisen. Two distinct memories of her father seem to have
place in these later phantasies. She sees herself once as a small child
standing up in her crib as her father enters in his uniform. As he em-
braces her his cigarette accidentally bums her uncovered shoulder. Her
screams call forth excessive tenderness and self-reproach for his care-
lessness, and the child is sure she discovers a tear in his steel-blue eyes.
Again she remembers the cracker bonbons which he would bring her
from the royal table, and which she preferred not to open because she
liked to deceive herself that within were golden robes. This quality of
extravagant phantasy bound with its narrow limitations is characteristic
428
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ABSTRACTS 429
of childhood. This contrast lies in the comparison of the limited child's
world with the great world lying about it and the dream world which it
extends beyond the borders of individual things. The small part of the
great world that the child possesses becomes a charmed kingdom laden
with the products of the child's imagination and opens out in endless
perspective in every direction. The aged find again these pathways
leading back into puzzling shadows, the artist recognizes their familiarity.
The parents are outside this life and yet are of it, since they too come in
the child's thought from those strange shores whence the children em-
barked, and thus they find their place with other fairy beings. The
internal and the external are united in the parents and the unknown
existence appropriated through the parental power and love, just as the
tenderness and power of the father had been united in the former re-
lated experiences. The author admits that her need of a God may have
been a morbid, regressive wish phantasy. But with the child the phan-
tasy life lies but a little way back. Besides the parents not only repre-
sent happiness but also what is hostile, so that in them a child's sense
of security is disturbed.
Orthodox religion provides a God ready at hand for need thus aris-
ing. Her own God was however distinct from the God woshipped by
her family. He seemed to be a creature of flesh and blood, to whom
she could however reveal her deepest childish secrets. He had the form
of a grandfather and concealed in the folds of his garments invisible
toys, which like the cracker bonbons she was content to leave unseen.
He was a fulfiller of all her wishes in his omnipotence, her champion in
childish punishments and wrongdoing. His omniscience comforted her
no less in this than his omnipotence.
The belief serves then, she says, at first as a defence against spirits,
which might turn one from one's own reality. It serves, like the ancient
deities, as a phantastic yet sober defence against forces and fears which
would tear the child asunder. The child of to-day struggles not against
wild beasts and such dangers with its god-fiction as a weapon, but against
other religious fictions of its parents and its environment, with a weapon
which it obtains from God, but which still naively it transforms into
its own life symbol. For this the childish conception of God must not
be less than common reality, and it must yet partake of the exorbitant
and the banal. This marks all primitive religions, that is all self-creative
religion. No sooner does the intellectual development begin to lift the
veil of things than the soul must answer with an upward soaring in
order not to recognize the slight difference between the seriousness of
na!v6te and that of the enlightenment soon to take place. The process
of believing is an affair of consideration, effort, discussion. The periods
of doubt therefore, historically also, most often follow upon the most
exalted belief. They are periods of emotional fatigue. Yet this intel-
lectual criticism guards the form of God so long as one needs him for
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430 ABSTRACTS
Other purposes besides the religious. It bedecks him with such adorn-
ments that one does not know whether a mummified god does not exist
behind atheism. This is called spiritualization in religious history, but
it does not prevent the most primitive gods, the most infantile from
appearing finally in all their nakedness. Nothing is so easily totally de-
structible as such a form of deity. Suddenly he has disappeared. Thus
my God, the author says, went from me as a personal loss by death, not
from doubt or withdrawal on my part. The power that had taken him
from me seemed a hostile power. The ability to believe had not gone
from me, only its object, so I turned then to belief in the devil. This
new companion was not long with me but during that time allowed me
to stew and broil in a sense of guih and fear from which God had always
guarded me. But these ugly things soon spent themselves like a fever.
However they left in their train a phantasy activity which had before
been bound with God, who had joined it to reality. Now it seemed as
if the door to reality was closed. This phantasy had escaped from hell
and turned me to dream pictures even though these occupied themselves
with real people, man, woman or child, whoever even might be met
upon the street Out of this phantasy work an intricate and perplexing
network had to be followed out by me, in thoughts of their youth, their
future age, birth, death, alternation of sex. This game was not new
but had formerly come to rest in God to whom I could confide all these
things, even with an " As thou already knowest." The loss of God had
in one point, besides the devil and phantasy effect, a hardening influence.
It led the child's thoughts to a more austere discipline, freed from sub-
jective meddling in questions of belief. She still encountered the God
of her elders, the picture of faith suitably retouched by logic and experi-
ence or he arose upon a background of philosophical opinion in a
shadowy, sublime outline. But these pictures and the discussions that
arose about them bore no relation to the wooden image of childhood.
Such a rupture occurs only when the significance of religion has forced
itself upon one in such an early period of life. In contrast the repre-
sentations of belief arise as a compromise between wishing and thinking.
They express the force or the wish no more restlessly and regardlessly
than the first naive childish dreams do theirs. For the most exalted
product of thought is no less secretly influenced by concealed motives
than the most evident dream manifestations. God is made the symbol
of the security, the exuberance and triumph of life. Therefore the
most godly outlive his denial and what was loss becomes a return to him.
Thus the later knowledge of the child exceeded the childish delight
in her God. The child's God, even while his greatness ccmiprehends all
things, is yet confined to the most limited experience of tenderness and
affection. The apparent paradox the author explains through psycho-
analysis, namely that the instinct for knowledge arises out of the warm
earthly roots of childish curiosity about origin and sex, which lies so
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ABSTKACTS 4$!
near the thought of God Thought and life, knowledge and sex, have the
same source, and the questionings after this awaken the final glow of
consciousness that we do exist
A neurotic fixation upon such a source of development causes a
vainly repeated attempt to open up the secret shrine of life. On the
other hand a fullness of life would drive these things from memory.
Thus a negative and a positive result of such experience remained for
the author, the former a prejudice against any consciousness of guilt as
if in the last analysis there was a denial of the '' forbidden and per-
mitted." The latter was a feeling that all joy had an eternal sanction
about it, as if it were an endless variation of Spinoza's word, "Joy is
perfection." One can understand this twofold feeling, which rested to
some extent still upon childish impressions, as a demand for the security
of life, if one remembers that when life seems most sufficient, most cre-
ative, then it approaches the religious. The exaltation that accompanies
even the physical act of procreation, which man transforms into the most
infantile idealization and deification, must also extend back into the orig-
inal spiritual symbol, the completeness of which lies enfolded in the child.
Life is the meaning of it all, and "God" is merely the final accent
thereof.
2. The Art of Andrea del Sarto and the Influence of His Wife. —
Jones offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the puzzling contradic-
tions in the work of this artist. His technique was faultless and of a
marvelously high character. Yet his spirituality remained undeveloped
and his work, with all its outer perfection and promise, never attained
the height of genius which might have been his. It is easy to attribute
this to the influence of his wife, who selfishly tyrannized over his private
life and his work as well. He loved her passionately and submitted him-
self fully to her domination. The reason for this state of affairs, how-
ever, gives the ultimate explanation also for his failure. Jones believes
it lies in the over development of the homosexual component of his
nature with the consequent atrophy of the opposite. His part in his
married life as well as in his relations of friendship was the feminine
rather than the masculine part, and this feminine characteristic is dom-
inant also in his productions. The daily struggle which the exactions
of his wife called forth prevented the deeper struggle which would have
resulted in a truly spiritual sublimation in his work. Possibly the early
infantile conflicts were not sufficiently strong to lead him to older paths
of infantile fixation, which might have furnished incentives to his work,
or he had not the characteristics for sublimation. At any rate his love
for Lucrezia, his wife, was the refuge from the homosexual conflict and
at the same time gave ample satisfaction to the masochistic instinct ac-
companying homosexuality. The intensity and servility of his love were
conditioned by the strength of the repressed hatred which must have
existed as well as by his need of this refuge. Andrea himself, accord*
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433 ABSTRACTS
ing to Browning's psychological characterization, felt this imperfect,
one-sided development of his nature when he says, " And thus we half-
men struggle."
3. The Origin of the Artistic Inspiration. — Pfister here continues
some of the penetrating work of Freud and his followers, by presenting
the analysis of a young artist carried out through an investigation of his
paintings and drawings. Most of them were spontaneously produced
during the course of the analysis, and show thereby emphatically their
close relationship to the dream and adaptability to the same methods of
interpretation. They arise from dreams of the day or of the night or
are closely connected with thenL They reveal an overpowering parent
complex with its many manifestations. Father hatred, strongly re-
pressed desire for the mother, which manifests itself in suicidal and par-
ticularly burial phantasies, express themselves variously and unmis-
takably. The attitude toward the patient's sisters is of marked interest.
The older sister, consciously loved, stands for the higher sublimated
honor and respect due the mother, while the younger sister, an acknowl-
edged object of hatred, represents the sensuous level of the mother de-
sire from which arises the unconscious conflict The analysis through
the pictures, Pfister acknowledges, is necessarily fragmentary and incom-
plete. Yet it is of particular value in that it reveals distinctively the
functional value of the artistic productions as of the dream. The lad
manifested a ready response to the analysis and these successive pro-
ductions show the effort of the unconscious to turn its original conflicts
to their own solution. It does not discard the earlier means of expres-
sion but throws into them new interpretation which the associations
plainly reveal as a gradual emergence into freedom and a true endeavor
to make it his. Psychoanal3rsis may be said to have robbed art of its
high distinction as an inspiration from above, since it finds its origin in
natural causes and aims. But on the contrary it lays upon it a new
honor, in that it recognizes it as the good Samaritan to the wounded, the
bound, the sick. It too has its mission of healing and setting free.
4. The True Nature of the Child Psyche.— 1, Mental conflicts etch
themselves deeply in the child soul. This grouping of pictures out of
child life impresses one with the universality of this fact as well as its
significant reality for the child's later life. It reveals also the varying
modes of reaction to the conflicts, sometimes inadequate, sometimes
forcefully though naively satisfactory. Baron Fouque, author of Un-
dine, in his autobiography reveals an unrecognized combined father and
mother phantasy. The desire to be one with the father, to take his
place, to measure up his small stature with the greater size of his father,
draw unbidden tears to his eyes as he gazes upon a painting suggestive
of these things. They determine dreams of confidence bestowed upon
the small boy by Knight Roland, of contest with the father, of contrast
between Xerxes and Leonidas. On the other hand the mother fancy
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ABSTRACTS 433
conditions an intense longing during illness for a certain dimly remem-
bered picture of the adored Madonna. His resistance to his father and
recognition of the possibilities within himself force upon the child the
phantasy of belonging to a clownish workman employed at his home and
condition a horror and loathing toward the fellow. The mother desire
is so strongly awakened by her death and an unfortunately unreal view
which the child had of her after death, that a severe but temporary
mental derangement followed. A finally more normal reaction of child-
ish tears and other external manifestations of grief restored him to a
normal healthful, budding life. Further dreams revealed yet other com-
ponents of infantile erotic desire and conflict.
IL Guy de Maupassant was another writer whose childish impres-
sions gave a marked direction to his later creative thought and moreover
to the wish impulses which manifested themselves in the mental illness
of his latest years. His keen childish penetration took note of his
father's love affairs and led to mention of them to both father and
mother with the frankness of childhood, which yet but half understood
theuL They doubtless laid the foundations of the suspicion of women,
the scepticism and the destructive analysis of his writings. In his later
delusions he exhibited in striking symbolism phantasies of great potency.
The tragic pathos of his phantasy found expression one day at the insti-
tution where. he was cared for, and where he busied himself still with
botany. He stuck a branch into a garden bed in order that " next year
young Maupassants might be found here." His procreation phantasies
revealed themselves further in a conception of the sound of the seeds
working their way up beneath the earth. *' They are the engineers," he
said, "who root up and hollow out the earth," the mother earth with
whom he would replace the father.
HI. The author who gives a glimpse into "Lidd/s" soul seems to
know something of the universal basis of childhood's conflict which
Freud has analyzed. Liddy, twelve years old, must pass the night in her
mother's bed because her mother's presence is required in the nursery.
Neither Liddy nor the mother can understand the reluctance with which
she consents to the arrangement, but it arouses an undefined feeling of
shame that she should have revealed her inner self to such a degree to
the mother. The sight of the two beds side by side, the washstand, the
smell of the soap, arouse strong painful aversion in the child. When
the father comes in and begins to undress she lies in a burning excite-
ment which forces her to peep at his undressing and yet a cold shudder
seizes her body. Hatred and jealousy seem to take possession of her,
and also a desire to remain unnoticed. The father, evidently considering
the child who lies there apparently asleep, extinguishes the light and
finishes disrobing in the dark. The father's hesitation seems to rend
the veil from Lidd3r's eyes and permit the shame and distress which
arise from a sense of unconscious guilt, due to incestuous impulses, while
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454 ABSTRACTS
she feels, too, the limitations of her twelve years. She can bear the
situation no longer, but waiting only until assured by her father's regular
breathing that he is asleep, she escapes to a divan in the living room,
where her mother finds her next morning in a profound slumber.
IV. Another illustration from childhood furnishes an example of the
early pleasure in the physical touch component of love. The strength
of this infantile feeling instinct, thus early manifest, must impress its
mark on later development If it remains attached to the mother image
it surely provokes resistance toward the adult sexual object, while the
unconscious incestuous love expresses itself consciously in shame, dis-
gust and anxiety. An example from a Russian romance illustrates the
employment of Freudian principles of anal3rsis to find the source of an
apparently unmotivated anxiety that appears in special circumstances.
The cause is soon discovered and the anxiety disappears. The ready
success of this incomplete analysis shows that a certain portion of an
experience can be successfully repressed unless there is too great an
accumulation of unpleasant experience with its accompanying feeling
tone, when pathological symptoms result.
V. A brief extract from Alfred Machard's "Les Cent Gosses"
['' The Hundred Urchins "] introduces those children who live near to
their natural instincts, and untutored and uncared for make their own
way through life's demands. The incident has its pedagogic, its social,
its human significance. A band of maidens, bold little '' Amazons " plan
a street attack upon a lad who has aggressively annoyed them through
attempts to repeat experiences which he has surreptitiously witnessed
between his parents in their one-roomed dwelling. The courage of the
maidens dwindles rapidly before the enemy appears until only the coura-
geous leader is left standing alone. The lad appears. He greets her
banteringly and leering. And she — ^the one brave member of the attack-
ing band — ^yields at once, almost without demur, and consents to gratify
his desire.
VI. " La Guerre des Boutons, roman de ma douzi^me annee " [" The
War of the Buttons, A Romance of My Twelfth Year "] by a youthful
writer, Louis Pergaud, offers another such picture of the unrefined
activities of children. It describes the youthful continuation of a feud
between elders. The children's method of attack is to tear off the but-
tons and tear out the button holes from the enemies' clothing, strip their
adversaries and send them home naked, while the trousers are twined
about the statue of St Joseph. Such is the grossness, the mischief, the
irreverence of childhood. Yet they harbor no enmity toward each other,
and contrary to the lasting hatred of their elders, tomorrow the hatchet
will lie buried and they will meet in the schoolroom on common terms.
VII. One more bit of childhood tragedy strongly urges upon us the
universality and potency of the (Edipus complex, which has been recog-
nized though not perhaps understood in the intuition of many artistic
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ABSTRACTS 435
writers. An extract from a romance of Dostojewski concerns itself
with the conscious outgrowth on the part of an unhappy child of a
hatred and aversion to the mother with a strong affection and partisan-
ship toward her stepfather. The home was a wretched one, the father
poor, unsuccessful, and by no means blameless for the misery and dis-
sension in the home. The heroine in reviewing this portion of her his-
tory recognizes this and questions why her attitude should be such as it
is, why her sympathies were all with the father, while she had not the
least concern for her mother's distress. "I knew,** she finally says,
"what it was; it was my phantasy love for my father, which blighted
me in its exclusiveness."
VIII. Still one more of these valuable extracts gathered by v. Hug-
Hellmuth. Multatuli, the keen psychological portrayer of human na-
ture, pictures the growing child in whom the unfolding desire for knowl-
edge is accompanied by a simultaneous unfolding of affection toward his
female companion, who answers his questions. Multatuli discusses with
this the close relation of the desire for knowledge and for love. Both
arise from the same root, and impel to exploration, research, to all meth-
ods of acquiring knowledge as well as to all forms of love's adventure.
Neither instinct however comes to full satisfaction. Were it so man
would come to a standstill. The impossibility of their satisfaction con-
ditions then a third human need, rebellion against denial and the im-
pulse to strive. All are grounded in the same foundation upon which
love grows, not merely sensuous love, but the love which, like desire for
knowledge, would press on, discover, possess, lead and honor. The task
and the desire of the lover or of the investigator of nature are the same.
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VARIA
Hypnotism and Psycho-Analysis: A Comparison. — ^In these days of
stress, when neurasthenia stalks grimly in our midst, it will not be out
of place to compare hypnotism and psycho-analysis in their curative
aspects.
I will declare frankly at the start, that I am in favor of psycho-
analysis, but by comparing the two treatments desire to show the reason
for my preference.
The power of the hypnotist lies in the capacity for arousing " a de-
sire to please " the physician, in the mind of his patient
We must then ask ourselves, " Why does the patient desire to please
the physician?" The answer is or must be, if truthful, "because the
hypnotist has succeeded in attracting the patient's libido." Soul and
body cannot be divided. Where the mind leads the body follows and
vice versa.
It will be useless to hold up one's hands in horror at the above state-
ment. We are not treating the subject sentimentally, but scientifically.
G)nscientious hypnotism is a partial sublimation of the sexual in-
stincts, because a worthy operator honestly desires to benefit humanity.
But unless he can attract the patient sexually, however subconscious
the process may remain, he may just as well sail paper boats on the
nearest pond!
The objection to this statement that at once occurs to the lay mind
is: "How can a male operator attract a male patient?"
In these enlightened days we have learned that the line between male
and female is " an imaginary line," and that no hard-and-fast demarca-
tion of the sexes is possible.
Let us now turn to the question of psycho-analytic treatment
To me, its great superiority over hypnotic treatment lies in the fact
of its much more successful sublimation. The " desire to please " is still
there, or the treatment could not continue, for the patient would become
taciturn and unresponsive.
However, there is a much greater personal detachment and even in
the case of a transference, the bond is looser and more easily removed.
If a hypnotist is really successful, he must either keep the patient in
bondage, or else cast him like an infant into the desert, without visible
means of sustenance!
The great difficulty and crowning achievement of psycho-analysis is
the accomplishment of successful transferences. Hypnotism leaves the
question of transferences severely alone, often with very cruel results.
436
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VARIA 437
Personally, I believe the old prejudice against hypnotism, namely
that it " sent people crazy/* simply lay in the fact that if the operator
brusquely deserted the patient, a severe neurosis was set up.
One of the gravest objections to psycho-analysis, especially nowadays,
is the great length of time that it may take to make a successful analysis.
This is true, at the moment, but when the treatment, which is at present
only in its infancy, progresses further, it is more than likely that speedier
methods may be discovered. Also the length of time depends a great
deal on the skill and tact of the analyst.
An unskilful practitioner will "side track" too frequently and be-
come involved in a mass of unnecessary detail.
The majority of patients will do anything to "mark time."
They have already made some sort of an adjustment to their condi-
tions and have too lively a remembrance of former conflicts, to welcome
any disturbance which may involve fresh struggles — "Peace at any
price" is their desire.
But a clever analyst will endeavor to circumvent this desire, know-
ing that stagnation is fatal.
" Move on " must be the order of the day, with perhaps an occasional
"breather." Personally, I consider that if a patient is once allowed to
linger unduly on the upward course, that the analyst loses power. The
patient discerning signs of weakness and incapacity loses respect for the
analyst and if that occurs, the case is lost.
Of course, an unskillful analyst may do as much harm as the hypno-
tist, by becoming entrapped in a transference, from which he can see no
escape, but I venture to assert that this will not occur if he keeps his
goal steadily before him and does not allow his vanity to be tickled.
A successful psycho-analyst must be unselfish, a devotee of truth and
a real lover of humanity.
He will then be great enough to rise above personalities and see all
things in the pure light of science.
I will now ask you to compare the most favorable hypnotic condi-
tions and those most favorable for psycho-analytic treatment.
We will first consider the hypnotic conditions. An element of sen-
suousness is essential to the greatest success; a dimly-lighted room,
soft music, the scent of hot-house flowers, would all be aids to the most
advantageous results; everything must be harmonius — soothing.
For the patient to recline on a comfortable couch amongst soft
cushions is desirable, in fact, briefly, the most favorable conditions are
precisely those which would be ideal for sexual intercourse.
The psycho-analyst, on the contrary, does not require a sensuous
setting. He merely requires a friendly relationship to be established
between himself and his patient and they might be seated in an empty
room for all it would matter, in fact the less the surroundings affected
or distracted the patient, so much the better. The situation may be
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438 VARIA
compared to that between counsel and defendant Any element of sen-
suousness would be a very great hindrance.
Although personally, I consider the temporary attachment of the
libido to the analyst, to be a necessity, the slighter the bond the better,
and as luxurious surroundings tend to strengthen the material attach-
ment, the less they are " en Evidence " the better.
The attachment of the libido must merely be the body following the
soul, not the soul of the body, as is invariably the case in hypnotism. The
subconscious sexual attraction will be deeper in proportion to the mental
elevation and the sublimation be therefore more perfected.
To refer again to hypnotism. G>nsider the importance of the fixed
gaze — the power of the eye.
It is well known that the eye is a sexual symbol, and with good
reason!
It is possible to make love with the eyes alone. All this is grossly
physical and exerts a powerful sexual influence on the patient
I am willing to admit that slight cures may be accomplished by hypno-
tism, without any apparent ill resulting, but they are hardly worth con-
sidering. Any really important "cure" must involve the sexuality of
the patient, so deeply, that harm is bound to result
Probably if the cases were closely followed up, the after results of
the slight cures would be found to result in slight neurosis.
Of course, much harm may result from psycho-analysis if practised
by unskilful analysts.
The responsibility is great and the true analyst requires special quali-
fications. If unskilful, he may become the tool of the patient, instead
of his master.
Psycho-analysis reeducates. Hypnotism merely substitutes one sex-
ual object for another.
I do not think that anyone who has studied these questions deeply, can
fail to come to the same conclusion.
Most hypnotists get a large amount of subconscious sexual gratifica-
tion from their patients and so blind themselves to the truth. Rational-
ization is not easily avoided. The most ardent devotee of truth is not
perfectly immune from self-deception and I should indeed be unwilling
to blame anyone for what the most honest man may scarcely avoid
Physicians, who have practically renounced hypnotism, still occa-
sionally use it for the purpose of bringing certain forgotten facts back to
the patient's memory.
This is unnecessary.
The hypnotist is powerless to make anyone act against their own
will and anything that a patient would be likely to reveal in hypnosis, he
would just as readily reveal to a skilful and tactful analyst without hav-
ing been hypnotized.
Indeed, the mere fact of his having forgotten the subject would be
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VARIA 439
an important clue in itself and might furnish valuable material for the
analyst
Hypnotism is useful in cases of severe pain, but this merely shows
that the pain is a defense reaction or a manifestation of a desire (as for
instance the simulated labor pains a spinster sometimes experiences at
menstruation), and can be eliminated at the patient's will.
A patient comes to a hypnotist and says : " I have such and such a
fear or habit or nervous trouble, can you cure me ? "
The hypnotist considers the case and may agree to undertake it He
does not ascertain if the desire of the sufferer to have the trouble re-
moved is genuine, but merely deals with the surface evidence and with
parrot-like reiteration endeavors to impress his patient's mind.
If the hypnotist's personality impresses the patient's mind sufficiently
agreeably, the subconscious agrees to renounce the nervous trouble, orig-
inally arisen from some repression of the patient's libido (which now
attaches itself to the hypnotist) and hey presto! the "cure" is complete.
But if the hypnotist cannot give sufficient in exchange for the orig-
inal sexual attraction, he has to register — ^a failure !
It always reminds me of a hen scratching in a garden, compared to
the careful cultivation of the soil by an expert — ^the expert being the
psycho-analyst
I am writing this article to show that in spite of the more speedy
methods of hypnotism, the tortoise-like analyst may arrive first at the
destination. The true hypnotist is born, not made.
Anyone with a sufficiently attractive personality can accomplish sotne
cures, but the really great hypnotist is going to strew his triumphant
course with the bodies of his victims. Sexuality has at its root, a love
of power, and hypnotism gratifies this feeling, whilst disguising it under
the cloak of philanthropy.
The psycho-analyst bases his success on the elimination of his per-
sonality, the hypnotist on the assertion of his personality.
If anyone can convince me of the fallacy of my arguments and asser-
tions, I shall be happy to be corrected (for truth is our goal) but I
doubt any one's ability to do so. I am very willing to admit that the
hypnotist's conscious desire is for the good of humanity, but to truly
benefit mankind one must employ brain as well as heart
I think I have touched upon all the chief points of comparison be-
tween hypnotism and psycho-analysis and will therefore conclude with a
quotation which seems to me to sum up the true spirit of the psycho-
analyst and distinguish his work from the surface treatment of the
hypnotist —
"There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course.'*
Cecilia Fancourt Streeten.
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440 VARIA
Idealism and Psycho^Analysis. — ^To the psycho-analyst it is given to
discover the heights and depths of human nature. But I wish to speak
chiefly ahout the heights, for the depths are hut the pit into which the
aspiring soul falls in its desperate attempts to rise higher.
All of us are idealists.
Htunanity is ever seeking an ideal and all life is but an attempt to
dwell in the light and inspiration of an ideal Naturally we first en-
deavor to idealize our parents and most blessed are those who can
successfully do so; their path in life will be a smooth one, for the parents
who do not fail their children are the parents who put the children's
highest good first, and themselves second
If one's parents fail one, then another ideal must be found.
Perhaps a brother or a sister or a friend. If a friend of the opposite
sex, marriage may result.
In marriage, if the two people concerned never do anything to de-
stroy the ideal in each other's minds, a really happy marriage will be
formed and, if they have children, a really happy family.
But what if the ideal falls short?
Then, more generally, one of the children is idealized, with disas-
trous results.
For this means that the child is put in the offending parent's place.
If the father is disappointed in his wife and they have a daughter, he
will probably idealize the daughter; if the ¥dfe is disappointed in the hus-
band she will probably idealize the son. This means that the parent,
having placed the child in an abnormal position, will find it almost im-
possible to encourage that child to make a life of his or her own, will
try to prevent their marriage and will cramp and stultify the unfolding
life.
For they will demand an unnatural affection from the child in order
to satisfy their disappointed hopes in their natural companion.
If people realized this danger they would try to avoid it and en-
deavor to sublimate their affections in other ways — ^in religion or philan-
thropy or art or in one of the many compensatory outlets, offered to
mankind.
But people are so ignorant of these psychological laws that the harm
is done almost unwittingly, whereas if the danger were fully recognized
and pointed out, much misery to mankind would be avoided
The art of love is so little understood at the present day, that hus-
bands and wives, failing to find the necessary interest in each other, turn
to their offspring, hoping to find in the unfolding life, a new horizon for
their dreams of romance.
But this also is unnatural, for anything that lays a burden on the
children is a mistake, anything that makes the children of abnormal inter-
est to the parents is a mistake. Childhood and youth should be free and
gay and frolicsome and children should not have to compensate the
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VARIA 441
parents for the mistakes those parents have made in their own lives;
rather is it the parents' part to lead the children in the right paths to the
goal of glorious ideals. A child who has seen a beautiful romance lived
by its parents believes in beauty all its life and has something to live for.
I have been speaking of cases in which parents have lost their ideal
of romance in each other, but it is when they lose each other's respect,
that grim tragedy stalks upon the scene.
It is then that outraged humanity, divine in its essence, shakes the
dust of its city of dreams from off its feet and wanders away in search
of a new ideal, and sometimes despairing of finding it in this world,
wanders into the next.
OhI the pity of it!
And yet the glory of finding that human nature is so divine that it
will die if disappointed of its ideal.
I do not believe the lowest human being in creation is devoid of an
ideal, however comparatively low its dream may be. "We needs must
love the highest when we see it," and as we see it.
It is one thing to be vaguely told to " be good " — it is another thing
to be shown the actual suffering caused to others by not " being good."
I have recently come across so much misery caused by the wrong
placing of ideals that I feel constrained to utter this word of warning.
If a parent can be sufficiently selfless to say " this child is an indi-
vidual soul and is not my property" all is well, and there need be no
fear of harm resulting from the parents' affection, even if it become
abnormally strong from not having found its normal outlet in the other
parent, but how many parents are able to do this ?
So many say, unconsciously perhaps, " this is my child, my property,
I have been defrauded of my rights and this child shall make up for that.
This child shall minister to me, this child shall companion me, this child
shall be to me all that its father (or mother) ought to have been." And
then they proceed to defend their dream from destruction by narrowing
the child's life to their own selfish needs, and tragedy is the result.
Oh ! the pity of it !
Psycho-analysis teaches us to know ourselves, not the shell of our-
selves, but the God and the Devil within each one of us, and there are
not many people who will keep up a shameful programme like the one I
have just instanced, if it is brought to the light of day.
Let us then seek to "know ourselves" and realize that each man
should be captain of his own soul and should place his ideal amongst
the stars "where neither moth nor rust do corrupt, nor thieves break
through and steal."
Cecilia Fancourt Strebtek.
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44^ VASIA
A Game of Cards^^Hearts. — ^The corners of the big brown room
fade in shadow — ^but the north side of it is brimful of light from a lively
fire of cedar logs, which throws up the colors of the striped Indian rugs
and the bright Indian blankets that are thrown over two great armchairs
drawn up at each side of the fire place.
The lamp that hangs from the center of the ceiling falls over a group
of three men and three women seated around a polished table.
The six of them are silent and intent upon what they are doing.
Their expressions change and shift — ^their color comes and goes. They
frown, or they laugh exultantly, as they make their moves. They are
playing cards.
What is " playing cards " ?
What is there so fundamental about it — that this custom, coming
down to us from most ancient days, continues to charm and engross
people of all ages and all tastes?
It must be because, underlying it, there is some satisfaction as com-
mon to all people as eating or making love.
What instincts does the game of cards call into activity?
There is the opportunity for prowess — for excelling over the others
with its gain of the sense of power.
There is the chance — ^the accident — that betrays the play of invisible
powers through one, which is part of all religion.
There is- the uncovering of the "unknown" — ^which gratifies the de-
sire in everyone for exploring and for discovery.
Then the cards themselves have different meanings. They are sym-
bols of characters who are eternally ourselves.
There is the hero-card.
In " Hearts " the Jack of Diamonds is the hero. The Jack of Dia-
monds counts thirteen to the good for whoever secures him.
There is the Malevolent " dark-lady,"— the "Queen of Spades" who
counts thirteen to the bad for whoever is unlucky enough or unskillful
enough to have her foisted upon him I
And the King and Queen of Diamonds would seem to be the father
and mother of the Hero, Jack. They "protect" him. Whoever has
them has him — so to speak. As for the Ace — " Highest " Card of All —
he is the god of the game — ^protector of them all I Who holds the Ace
holds the game — ^nearly always.
Of course the King of Spades protects the wicked queen, his con-
sort, and takes her wicked part; no godly ace has any power to further
her destructive purpose.
Then the Hearts I To hold them in the end cotmts against us ! To
give them away as fast as we have them frees our hand for winning 1
Isn't this the very game of life, locked up in this handful of paste-
board things ?
As we sit together around this table, perhaps we are releasing our
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VAWA 443
pent-up loves and hates— our secret ambitions and some of our unsatis-
fied instincts which the censor of man within each of us, guarding all
our acts, has told us we cannot bring into full play every day.
In a game of cards we may find a substitute for the game of life — a
substitutes that gives us, biologically, a free hand, and which, sociolog-
ically, does not offend civilization. For in that fairy land it is not unbe-
coming for a lady to play quite openly for the Hero, and to grab him if
she can, from her rivals — ^and for the man who secures him — ^well it is
easy to read from his delighted swagger, that he has identified himself
with "Jack" — and in fact become him I
The game of cards is the game of love, and in it every repression
may seek its outlet, every thwarted instinct may have its release.
Every fresh hand is an opportunity for discovery, and curiosity, un-
bridled now, may go as far as it can.
This holds true for cards played for the love of the game, or rather
let us call it, played as the Game of Love; when it is played for money
the standpoint shifts to another set of instincts — ^and the nutritive self-
preserving centers are stirred and animated and unbound.
The game in the brown fire-lit room goes on — and all at once there
is an interruption. Some one knocks at the door — and then opens it.
It is a servant announcing two visitors :
"Mr. and Mrs. Average."
They advance into the room and the players suspend the game for
a moment It is amusing to see the various reactions from this inter-
ruption.
The players are slightly, very slightly discomfited.
They divide their feelings partly into resentment at being interrupted,
and partly into a slight, very slight embarrassment.
This ancient traditional embarrassment at being caught playing cards
is as fundamental as the act for which it is the substitute.
The two visitors react also — ^but diflFerently from the players— even
differently from each other.
Mrs. Average feels a slight — ^very slight anger at the sight before
her. She feels herself hardening and resisting the pleasant social scene.
She feels a sort of rigidity all along her spinal column.
But almost at the same instant she suppresses these unworthy feel-
ings. She forces a smile and comes forward with an artificial geniality,
exclaiming:
"Oh I Cards?"
Mr. Average has had quite another sensation upon seeing the play-
ers. He comes forward with real geniality and a ready smile. But in
the smile there lurks the satisfaction of finding out fellow sinners. His
greeting is the same but his intonation I
"Oho I Cards I"
Take any six or eight people who know how to play and care for it.
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and watch them play cards. Watch the courage and the daring, the
secrecy, the plotting and the snaring f
Watch the unhridled expression of masculine triumph in overcoming:,
and, above all, watch the relentless, unmerciful, calculating, unmaidenly
play of the female I
One of the great moments to study and understand mankind is while
he is playing at cards in the biological Happy Hunting Ground !
MabslDodgb.
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BOOK REVIEWS
Totem and Taboo. By Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud Translated hj
A. A. Brill. New York, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1918. Pp. 265.
Price, $2.00 net
Another translation of Dr. Brill's of one of Professor Freud's works«
The work originally appeared in a series of papers in Imago and sub*
sequently was published in booklet form. It now for the first time
appears in English.
The book consists of four essays, namely (i) The Savage's Dread of
Incest, (2) Taboo and the Ambivalence of Emotions, (3) Animism,
Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought, (4) The Infantile Recurrence
of Totemism. In these essays Professor Freud approaches the exceed-
ingly obscure anthropoloical problems of totemism, taboo, and of exo-
gamy from the psychoanalytic viewpoint He briefly reviews the best
opinion upon these subjects and then tmdertakes the application of
psychoanalytic principles. Unfortunately he has very little psycho-
analytic experience which casts any direct light upon the problem of
totemism. He quotes only one analyzed case in the literature, namely
the case reported by Ferenczi. The conclusion which he comes to,
however, is that the totem is a father image.
The conclusion that the totem is a father image to anyone who is
not familiar with psychoanal3rtic interpretations would not seem to have
been very well substantiated by the material brought forward. Pro-
fessor Freud, however, develops this conception and in a fascinating
way shows how if it be accepted a whole host of conclusions follow
which fit in with great nicety to the actual conditions so far as they are
known. Of particular interest and importance are W. Robertson
Smith's investigations of the totem feast in his ''Religion of the
Semites," the suggestions of Darwin as to the nature of the earliest
human group, and the extraordinary conclusions of Atkinson, which fit
.in absolutely with the psychoanalytic interpretations of Professor Freud
The work is an exceedingly interesting and valuable contribution to
the probelm of mass psychology in its developmental and evolutional
aspects, particularly is it valuable from the psychoanalytic point of view
as a contribution to what Jelliffe has called paleopsychology, an aspect
of psychology which has come more and more into prominence espe-
cially as we apply our psychoanalytic methods to the problems of the
frank psychoses, particularly of the introversion type (dementia
praecox). What is now needed is further investigations which will give
us some idea of the relative age, to carry out the figures, of the various
445
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446 BOOK HEVIEWS
psychological strata. Such ontogenetic stratifications as autoerotism,
narcissism, heterosexual object love; such developmental periods in the
history of thought as the animistic, religious, and scientific; paralleled
perhaps by the pathological phenomena of hystetria, compulsion neurosis,
paranoia, dementia praecox ; uncovering increasingly deep strata, are but
the larger sub-divisions, the main epochs, each one of which needs to
be split up as a result of further investigation. When this is done, and
in addition each one of the various strata can be identified by its char-
acteristic psychological fossils, then we will begin to have a basis upon
which we can formulate a psychopathology which will give us some in-
dication through the symptoms of the seriousness of the illness and the
possibilities for recovery.
The translation is excellently well done, in fact it is one of the best
which has come from the pen of Dr. Brill. It is to be hoped that the
book will still further enlarge the sympathetic audience of psychoanalysis.
White.
Personality and Conduct. By Maurice Parmalee, Ph.D. New York,
Moffat, Yard and Co., 1918. Pp. 283. Price, $2.00 net
An interesting little book touching those questions which arise when
the individual instincts cross the interests of society. The author en-
deavors to deal with what he calls invasive conduct, particularly alcohol
and drug habituation, the gambling impulse, and the irregularities of
sex relations in a way which would indicate the degree of regulation
which is possible without unduly checking the spontaneity of human
conduct The book is interesting and wholesome, but fails in that depth
of insight which comes from a real understanding of human motives
rather than from an effort to deal with their superficial manifestations.
For example, the author speaks of monogamous marriage as being main-
tained in large part by "artificial institutions and conventions," as if
social institutions and conventions which survive through the years
could be wholly excrescences without foundation in the psychological
nature of man. The author speaks of the coming of free contractural
marriages in which, for example, extra-matrimonial relations may be
permitted by one or the other of the parties in accordance with the
terms of the contract — a rather grotesque suggestion in view of the his-
tory of the development of the marriage relation. He also suggests that
bigamy, adultery, fornication, concubinage and prostitution will disap-
pear as criminal ofiFences and divorce become free without apparent ap-
preciation of the value which has accrued to society from considering
such conduct as criminal and treating it as such. Perhaps his predic-
tion may come true, but it at least should be made upon a basis of an
understanding of why in the past it seemed necessary to deal with such
conduct as criminal.
The main criticism of the book of course from the standpoint of this
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BOOK REVIEWS 447
journal is that it is not psychoanalytic, otherwise it is readable, interest-
ing and instructive.
White.
The Mental Survey. By Rudolf Pinter. New York, D. Appleton and
Company, 1918. Pp. 116. Price, $2.00 net
Another book on mental tests, of which there seems to be no end.
Human ingenuity has been stressed during the past few years to invent
ever new ones, and for each person who invents a test no doubt that
particular test gives to him a maximum of information about the indi-
vidual being tested. The author of this book has developed his own tests,
describes them in detail, and gives their application and results. Many
men have devised many tests and on the whole a great deal of work has
been done with them in helping classify individuals in a rough sort of
way. The psychoanalyst of course has always felt that tests did not
take sufficient note of the emotional side of life, but that is no reason
why the general good results which undoubtedly accrue from their use
should not be fully appreciated. The individualistic work of the psycho-
analyst of course could not be repeated with very large groups and the
efforts to devise tests which will give information when applied in this
way is an effort in the right direction and one which as the years pass
is found to produce ever better results. Each such book as this, there-
fore, is a welcome contibution to this effort.
White.
Psychological Tests. A Bibliography. Compiled by George J.
Rueger, being Bulletin No. 6, Supplement i, of the Bureau of
Educational Experiments.
This pamphlet is a bibliography of mental tests divided into two
parts, the first part containing the titles that refer to the Binet-Simon
scale, and the second part containing the titles that refer to mental tests
other than the Binet-Simon scale. There are approximately 200 titles
with a few words of descriptive text following each one of them.
White.
Mrs. Marden's Okdeal. By James Hay, Jr. Boston, Little, Brown,
and Company, 1918. Pp. 307. Price, $1.50 net
This book is another concrete evidence of the extent to which the
psychoanalytic idea is filtering through the social fabric. We hear it
mentioned on the stage, we see it referred to in the short stories in the
magazines, and here is a novel which incorporates it. It really looks as
if the psychoanalysts were coming into their own to the extent that
they are gaining steadily that recongition of their work which is its due.
The present novel is the best thing in the reviewer's opinion which
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448 BOOK REVIEWS
has come from the pen of the author. It is excellently well done. How-
ever one might be able to find fault with the application of some of the
psychoanlaytic principles involved, liberty has been taken with these
principles to further the dramtatic purposes of the noveL It is an
artistic and a literary license which we may the more readily grant be-
cause the author has given us an absorbing story which maintains its
interest to the last page.
White.
MosKiD Feass and Compulsions. Their Psychology and Psychoanalytic
Treatment. By H. W. Frink, M.D., with an introduction by
James J. Putnam, M.D. New York, Moffat, Yard ft Co., 1918.
Pp. xxviii + 568. Price, $4.00.
This is an excellent book and shows well how the psychoanalytic
movement is stabilizing and how its principles are being clarified more
and more in the literature. Probably no one of the many works that
have been published on this subject serves to so clearly and effectively
set forth the fundamental principles that are involved in psychoanaljrsis
as they are held by Professor Freud himself. The author for a number
of years has been a close student of original sources and shows himself
eminently competent to speak. The very admirable illustrations from
his own case material add very much to the value of the book and to the
elucidation and clarifying of principles. It is exceedingly difficult to
understand how critics of this movement of the sort which one usually
meets could possibly read this book and if they were able to understand
it fail to complete its last page without having stirred within him some
comprehension of what psychoanalysis aims at doing, with the neces-
sarily resulting stirrings of sympathy for the work. Dr. Frink has done
his work most admirably and stuck to that viewpoint from which Freud
has rarely deviated, except of course in his more general works, namely
the welfare of the patient It is the therapeutic approach which re-
duces psychoanalysis to those simple statements of fact which must
ultimately receive their due scientific consideration. There are no
theoretical excursions in such work which can be attacked more or less
successfully by any one, but a recounting of actual situations, and the
way in which they are met in the course of the therapeutic endeavor.
White.
N0TICE.F-A11 business communications should be addressed to The
Psychoanalytic Review, 36x7 Tenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
All manuscripts should be sent to Dr. William A. White, Saint Elisa-
betfa's Hospital, Washington, D. C.
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War Industries Board
Washington
From Lieut. Col. F. F. Simpson, M.C., N.A., Chief of Section of
Medical Industry.
To The Doctors and Dentists of the Country.
Subject : Utilization of Platinum in Unused Instruments.
1. In view of the limited supply of platinum in the country and
of the urgent demand for war purposes, it is requested that every
doctor and dentist in the country go carefully over his instruments
and pick out EVERY SCRAP OF PLATINUM that is not abso-
lutely essential to his work. These scraps, however small and in
whatever condition, should reach governmental sources without de-
lay, through one of two channels :
(a) They can be given to proper accredited representatives of
the Red Cross who will shortly make a canvass for that purpose.
(&) They may be sold to the government through any bank
under the supervision of the Federal Reserve Board. Such banks
will receive and pay current prices for platinum.
By giving this immediate attention you will definitely aid in the
war program.
2. It is recognized that certain dental and surgical instruments
requiring platinum are necessary, and from time to time platinum
is released for that purpose. It is hoped, however, that every phy-
sician and every dentist will use substitutes for platinum for such
purposes wherever possible.
3. You are warned against giving your scrap platinum to anyone
who calls at your office without full assurance that that individual
is authorized to represent the Red Cross in the matter.
F. F. Simpson,
Chief of Section of Medical Industry.
449
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INDEX
Affection, craving for, 409
Ambition, 75
Anal erotism, 57, 71, 201
Andrea del Sarto, The Art of, 431
Audreas-Salom^, L., 428
Anger, 86
Animals, children and, 227
fondness for, 422, 423
Artistic inspiration, Origin of, 432
Attention, 201
Bi-sexuality, 411
in relation to neuroses, 109
Blenler, 104
Blumgart, L., 228
Book Reviews:
Brown: Six Worship and Sym-
bolism in Primitive Races, 341
Carroll: The Mastery of Nerv-
ousness, Based upon Self-Re-
education, 341
Coover: Experiments in Psy-
chical Research in Leland
Stanford Junior University,
343
Freud : Totem and Taboo, 445
Frink: Morbid Fears and Com-
pulsions, 448
Hay: Mrs. Marden's Ordeal,
447
Parmalee: Personality and Con-
duct, 446
Pf ister : The Psychoanalytic
Method, 342
Pinter: The Mental Survey, 447
Rueger : Psychological Tests,
447
Brink, L.. 255, 323, 428
Brown II, S., 341
Burrow, T., 243
Campbell, C M., 269
Cards, A Game of, 442
Carroll, R. S., 341
Castration complex, 199
Chansons de Geste, 381
Chanson de Roland, 382
Child, mental life of, 53f I93f ^91,
398
Child phyche, nature of, 432
Children, other, 415, 416, 417
Christs, 181
Climbing, 196
Companionship, 418
Compassion, 316
Compulsion and freedom, 255
Conflict, 362
Conflicts, childhood, with reference
to urinary ssrstem, 269
Conscience principle, 362
Coover, J. E., 343
Criminal psychology, fragments of.
338
Crucifixion, 181
Cruelty, 316, 4^ 426
Curiosity, 201
infantile, 26
Darwin, Charles, Sources of his
Neurosis, 151
Death, 315
Deceit, 60
Dedifferentiation, 100
Defloration, ceremonial, 339
Desire to be grown up, 211
Differentiation, 100
Disgust, 195
Doctor, playing, 196
Dodge, M., 444
Dooley, L., i
Dream, Egmont's, Analjrsis of, 229
Dream that explains itself, 230
Dreams, 41, 90
of convenience, 91
stair-case, 92
of water, 92
450
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INDEX
451
Echolalia, 400
Education, fear in, 302
Emotions, 408
Enuresis, 270
nocturua, 195
Envy, 415
Erection, aop
Erotic cravings in child, 420
Erotism, skin and muscle, 54
Ethical feelings, development of, 84
Evarts, A, B^ 364
Exhibitionism, 61, 196^ 204
Fable, fantasy and, 234
Fairy-tale, 299
Fantasy and fable, 234
Father complex, 23, 41
Fear, 60, 90, 301
Freedom, 255
Frcnd, S^ 104, 323, 445
psychoanalysis of, 238
Friendship, 419
Frink, H. W., 448
Function, structuralization of, 97 , .
Gender, 407
Glueck, B^ 339
God, 319, 320, 321
Gradients, Child's developmental, 93
Handwriting, symbolism of, 126
Hamik, J., 428
Hatred, 412, 413
Hay, J., 447
Hero, 266
Hostility, feelings of, 412, 414
Hound of Heaven, The, 345
Hypnotism and psychoanalysis, 436
Idealism and psychoanalysis, 440
Imagination^ 219
Imago, 323, 428
Imitate, impulse to, 79
Incest-awe, 248
origin of, 243
Incest fantasy, a lace creation re-
vealing an, 364
Incest-revolt, 244, 245
Individual, the organic, 93
Infancy, period of, 53
Intellect, first signs of development
of, 76
Intelligence, 304
Intrauterine symbolism, 32, 33
Jahrbuch fur psjrchoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen,
104, 228
Jealousy, 86
JelliflFe, S. E., 255
Jones, E., 428
Judicial opinion, psychological study
of, 336
Jung, C G., 104
Kempf, E. J^ 151
Kissing, 55
Kleptomania, 144
Kette, W., 428
Knowledge, 250^ 251
Libido, 345, 346
Lorenr, E. R, 428
Love, 398
psychology of, 104
Love-plays, 78
Manic-depressive psychosis,
adolescent activities in, 19
analysis of, i
archaic formations in, 31
infantile fantasies in, 23
Manic-depressive reaction, 45
Marriage and maternity symbolism,
29
Masochistic component of pleasure,
90
Maternal organism, relation of in*
fant to, 243, 246
Memory, 213
fidelity of, 214
pedagogy and, 217
Memories, earliest, 214
erotic, 215
Mental life of primitive and neu-
rotic people, similarities in, 323
Mistakes, 402
Moore, T. V., 345
Morality, 253. 425, 426
Mother attachment, 410
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452
INDEX
Muscle-erotism, 86
Nakedness, 60, 207
in Saga and Poetry, 32$, 330
Names, personal, reaction to, 47
Narcissism, 27, 205
Negro complex, 34
Neomismus, 84
Nephew and maternal uncle, 381
Nurse dreams, 87
Obemdorf, C. P., 47
Obstinacy, 60
Onanism, infantile, 59
Only child, 88, 409
Organ inferiority, 99
in relation to neuroses, 109
Origin of children, 293
Parmalee, M., 446
Parsons, S. C, 340
Pecking, 61
Peeping impulse, 196, 204
Pfister, O., 342
Phantasy, 219, 223, 224
Pinter, R., 447
Play, 194, 398
object of, 194
Pla)rtime, 193
Pleasure in moving, 61
Pleasure sucking, 56
Precocity, 200
Principles governing mental phe-
nomena, 361
Psyche, 98
Psychoanalysis, criticism of, 242
of Freud, ^
Psychoanalytic conference in 1910,
Psychosis, form of, 44
functional, 45
Psychotherapy, 99
Putnam, J. J., 53, 121, 193, 291, 398
Rank, O., 104, 323, 428
Reasoning, 303
Reik, Th., 428
Religion, early, 428
Robitsek, A., 104
Rosenstein, G., 104
Rueger, G. J., 447
Sadger, J., 104
Sadism, 194
Sado-masochism, 65
Schroeder, T., 336
Scratching, 55
Sensations, muscular, 54
Sense of taste, 70
of touch, 63
of smell, 70
Senses, functions of, 53
Sex symbols, 39
Sexes, differences between the, 205»
207, 208
Sexual act as it appears to child, 29S
Sexual enlightenment, 213, 298
Silberer, H., 104
Sin, 252
Skin erotism, 64, 199
Smell, 57
Space, 306, 309, 310
Speech, 398
beginnings of, 81
Speech-sadism, 399
Spielrein, S., 428
Stair-case dreams, 92
Stevens, M., 53, 193, 291, 398
Streeten, C. P., 439, 441
Sucking, 55
Sucking-habit, 55
Suckling, 53
Symbolism of the bridal dress, 19
of clothes, 19
of colors, 34
of ear, 38
of foods, 38
of forms, 138
of handwriting, 126
of impregnation, 37
of left and right, 38
of muscular or movement erot-
ism, 129
of number 3, 135
of numbers, 36, 138, 142
of water, 32, 134
of wind, 134
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INDEX
453
Symbolisms, interpretation of, 121
Symmetry, 95
Thompson, Francis, 346
Thumb sucking, 55
Tickling, 198
Time, 306, 3", 312, 313, 314
Totemism, infantile return to, 323
Training, 425
Twins, 89, 418
Uncle, maternal, and nephew, 381
Understanding, The, aoi
Urethral erotism, 71, 114, 201
Urinary symptoms in psychoneuroses
and psychoses, 269
Vocation, choice of, 293
Volitional activity, first signs of, 72
von Hug-Hellmuth, H., 53, 193, 291,
398, 428
Weinberg, A. K., 381
Whence and whither, 309
White, W. A., 93
Wish, The, 102, 257, 263
Willow tree. The fantasy of the, 255
Word formation, 405
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